Why is it that people like Mark Sanford – who has been involved in scandal after scandal, Sen. Tom Coburn – who has come out with some of the most outrageous statements and James Inhofe keep getting elected to office ? As well as any number of outright liers and crooks ?

Why do those same people as well as those who voted for them hate the idea of bank and business regulation ?

Because the people who voted these folks and others like them into office really do believe in the same things that their representatives believe in.  That’s why.

They hate Obamacare and taxes and all regulation. Not just business regulation…ALL REGULATION.   They hate being told where they can drink or eat or smoke. Who they can keep out of their establishments and schools and housing subdivisions. Be they Irish or Jewish or German or Black or Latino or Native American or Gay or Female. They hate Affirmative Action and The Voting Rights Acts and anything that gives anyone special privileges – well except them of course.

They hate being taxed to help all those they despise or because they engage in some activity or indulge in some substance that others do not approve. To charge what ever they like and pay their employees whatever they like and work them as hard as they like.

It’s not because they don’t like Federal largesse, that has nothing to do with it. They see the Federal government as a bunch of meddlesome busy bodies and the left especially so. Getting down on their churches and private religious schools – the last place they see where they still have complete control.

They want to see a world like it was in 1957 where they could do what they wanted, where they want with out fear of someone getting on their case. Where they could deny access to anyone for any reason. Especially those they despise.   And they see the only way to accomplish this to to deny the government of the funds needed to enforce those laws.  Thereby neutering it.

Stick figure self portrait - marcopolis flicr creatice commons

A lot has changed between 1960 and 1990.  Satellite TV and other communication became common. Nearly all vacuum tube electronics were replaced by solid state transistors and integrated circuits.  The technology that would lead cell phones and the internet would become more and more available.

Personal communications would become the norm.

Before all this the only way of communicating to one another was via the land line phone and written letters. Getting ones message or concern across to multiple people required either something in the newspaper – an add of some sort or announcement in the classified section,  some sort of an announcement on the radio or TV – usually on their community bulletin board – to let people know there would be a meeting of gathering of some kind.   Or post it up someplace in town.  Things like that.

Nearly all discussions took place by people in person. No chat sections on the internet or blogs or anything like that.  People would get together – one, two or more and set down and hash things out.  Meetings would be called for various reasons – political or social concerns.

This is how nearly all – if not all movements came about. From the earliest union efforts through the civil rights movement to the anti-war movements. Personal, physical communication.  There is something about getting together as a group someplace, even if it’s in a park or someones living-room.  The interaction we get from actually seeing and hearing other peoples concerns and ideas that give rise to movements.  The energy that they create. The imagination and creativity involved. The spontaneity.  The emotional expressions that we give and experience.  From the first vestiges of revolutionary thinking in France and Russia and even here.  In church gatherings and town hall meetings or just sitting outside a cafe or inside a pub.

This is what’s missing today. Sure we have a lot of angry and disenchanted and discouraged and frustrated people.  And communication like never before. But we also have something else that I see as the biggest hindrance to all of this. To much stuff. To many distractions and diversions.   It’s far to easy to switch tabs or windows on a browser, to ignore that which makes us uncomfortable.

And we do nearly all of this in private – by our selves with few, if any, around.    On chat or some blog comment section or on our cell we miss a vital part of communication, that of physical interaction.  Of seeing the fear or anger or sadness or rage in peoples faces. Of hearing it in the voices. Of giving physical comfort or affirmation.    Of standing up in a crowd of people and speaking ones mind.

It’s all well and good to sit at a computer and type out what you are thinking but it hardly replaces what one is feeling.  And you do not get hugs or pats on the back in return.  And it’s much more difficult to ignore someone who is sitting next to you.

And that is what is missing today.

Fantasyland - flickr creative commons - PincessAshley

I like to see and read the entries from Resilient Communities and Democracy at Work and other similar sites.  Both offer some good information.

And Richard Wolff is spot on in his evaluation of how we got to where we are in most respects.

I feel however that nearly all these ideas leave out one one basic calculation and that is the ever increasing population.  The continued strain we are putting on the resources that we have, which are finite. Worse yet climate change is even now diminishing our available resources with longer and more sever droughts and interrupted growing seasons.

When this country or continent was being settled it was a capitalist’s and serf’s wet dream come true. Land as far as the eye see. There was some place one could grown just about anything or raise cattle or what not. At the beginning of the industrial revolution, resources were there pretty much for the taking. Rivers could be dammed for energy and coal – and later oil – were abundant. Iron and copper and zinc and on and on.

Fresh clean water and air and what not.  But in a little over 200 years this has ceased to be the case. Our oil fields have gone dry. Coal is now too dirty to use in any scale and it’s mining pollutes the rivers and streams.  Any river that could be dammed for energy has already  been.   Any land that is good growing is spoken for. That which is left is rocky or desert or both.

But even this presentation tends to be a bit on the optimistic side as it does not truly take into account the effect of population growth and climate change.   Nor does it take into account the fact humans rarely behave in a reasonable and rational manner when faced with their backs increasingly against the wall.

Ives Smith at Naked Capitalism  shows how the increasing student debt is even now dragging on the economy as new graduates are finding it more and more difficult – if not impossible – find employment.

And yet most – if not nearly everyone – seems to think we can some how avoid the inevitable or make it somehow less painful.   I see this as highly unlikely as long was we insist on growth in any area. And stopping growth in population seems to be the one area nobody wants to deal with. Yet it is the one area that needs to be dealt with the most.  As long as humans insist on creating more humans, it simply is not possible to have a sustainable future that is not some dystopic hell.

“Orwell was wrong. Huxley…now there’s a prophet for you.”   Anonymous

Pepe Escobar gave a lecture at the 13th Seminary of Political Solidarity Don Juan Chavez in memoriam at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. Part of which has been reproduce in Asia Times and Counter Punch.   A fairly scathing taking of world civilization or brutal reality check – depending on ones point of view.  Dealing with how “Casino capitalism – aka turbocharged neoliberalism – is ruthlessly destroying the last vestiges of the welfare state and the egalitarian consensus in the industrialized West”  Where -

Integration, socialization and multiculturalism are being corroded by disintegration, segregation, and widespread de-socialization – a direct consequence of the David Harvey-coined notion of “dis-accumulation” (society devouring its own).

And that -

This state of things is what Flemish philosopher and art historian Lieven De Cauter, in his book Entropic Empire, calls “the Mad Max phase of globalization”.

……..

An individualistic, self-indulgent, passive, easily controllable consumer drowned in a warped form of democracy that basically favors insiders – and very wealthy players; how could that be a humanist ideal? Yet the PR was so good that this is what legions in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America aspire to. But it’s still not enough for the geo-economic Masters of the Universe.

Thus post-history as the ultimate reality show. And war neoliberalism as its favorite weapon.

Indeed. I myself had come to this very conclusion when I saw that what has been passing as technological advances in the last 20 years or so were noting more than glorified play toys for college educated bourgeois. As well as better ways to kill off those who get in the way of neocon and neoliberal world control and domination.   With their heads firmly implanted in some high tech device (and up their ass) and being constantly fed a stream of misinformation, they firmly believe that everything is under control.

But as Mike Whitney points out, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Obama’s budget cuts. Retail sales are off, manufacturing is sputtering, earnings are weak, existing home sales are dropping, and durable goods are in the tank.

…….

Problems in the US are compounded by growing troubles abroad, notably the slowdown in China and the ongoing Depression in  Europe.

And that -

Let’s not kid ourselves, none of this is accidental. This whole permanent Depression-thing is just part of the plan. How could it not be? I mean, is there anyone dumb enough to believe in austerity anymore?  Even the right-wing Washington Post has given belt tightening the old heave-ho.

…….

But it doesn’t matter how discredited the policy is, the politicians are going to keep ratcheting up the pressure until they get what they want, which is, more privatization of public assets, more busting up federal unions and more dismantling critical safetynet programs. (particularly, SS, Medicare, Medicaid) Present policy has nothing to do with growing the economy or putting people back to work. It’s just plain old class warfare.

As Pepe Escobar  says neoliberals are systematically unwinding and unraveling society- A devolution for the sake of capitalism.

It goes without saying that post-history buries the Enlightenment – as favoring the emergence of all sorts of fundamentalisms. So it had also to bury international law; from bypassing the UN to launch a war on Iraq in 2003 to using a UN resolution to launch a war on Libya in 2011. And now Britain and France are taking no prisoners trying to bypass the UN or even NATO itself and weaponize the “rebels” in Syria.

So we have a New Medievalism that cannot but fit wealthy neo-theocracy – as in Saudi Arabia and Qatar; because they are Western allies, or puppets, internally they may remain medieval. Superimposed, we have the politics of fear – which essentially rules Fortress America and Fortress Europe; fear of The Other, which can be occasionally Asian but most of the time Islamic.

What we don’t have is a political/philosophical vision of the future. Or a historical political program; political parties are only worried about winning the next election.

As feudalism begot capitalism,  so capitalism is producing the new feudalism.   One need only look to Detroit or Youngstown Ohio or the mess that Sandy left that the victims are walking away from.  Or better yet the incident in Boston where Americas Gestapo and SS closed the entire city down just to find one 19 year old kid.  I hope the residents gave the request salute as they passed by their homes that they dare not leave, lest they find themselves riddled with bullet holes. “Shot while trying to escape.” I believe the term was.

Our new technology is making this as easy and efficient as turning off a light switch.

Financialization’s ultimate goal is unlimited accumulation of profit – a system where the wealthy get much wealthier and the poor get literally nothing (or, at best austerity). The real-life Masters of the Universe are a denationalized rentier class – cannot even call them noblesse, because mostly their absence of taste and critical sense is appalling, as in purveyors of unabashed bling bling. What they do is to the benefit of corporations, instead of the protecting functions of states. In this state of things military adventures become police doctrine. And a new information technology – from drones to “special” munitions – can be used against popular movements, not only in the South but also the North.

And in LA, NYC and Boston.  This whole neoliberal thought, lest ye forget, got it’s start with the so called “Best and the Brightest“  A group of capitalism worshiping intellectuals who were so afraid that communism would take over the world, they plunged head on into a war in South East Asia that would become the blueprint for neoconservatives and neoliberals from then on.

Leaving it their wake one version of dystopia after another.

Not many contemporary thinkers are equipped to thrash Left and Right in equally devastating measure. Michea tells us that both Left and Right have submitted to the original myth of capitalist thinking; this “noir anthropology” that makes Man an egoist by nature. And he asks how could the institutionalized Left have abandoned the ambition of a just, decent society – or how the neoliberal wolf has wreaked havoc among the socialist sheep.

So pick your dystopia. Fritz Lang, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Phillip K. Dick.  All just variations on the neoliberal and neoprogressive ideal of a perfect world.

Disney World - flickr creative commons

All righty now.  Two home made bombs go off at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, creating enough death, injury and destruction to occupy the news cycle for  at least 24 hours. Followed by the miraculous work of our law enforcement to correctly identify the culprits from some very out of focus stills  garnered from some security cameras. Thus triggering a manhunt in Boston the like of which Boston – or any where else – has not seen. To capture a 19 year old, screwed up kid. And the people of Boston rolled over and played dead through the whole affair.  Then cheering loudly when he was caught as if Hitler and Stalin both where apprehended in the middle of some torturous act.

Even Pepe Escobar at Asia Times thinks the whole theatre smells more than a little of 10 day old halibut.

In two previous articles, for RT RTand for Asia Times Online I have looked into the superimposed levels of blowback implied by the Boston bombing.

With still so many unanswered questions regarding what took place on the ground in Boston after the bombing, it’s time to look at an extra, possible Top Ten list of lingering absurdities. And this without sidestepping other unanswered crucial questions, such as why a bomb drill – organized by Craft – was going on during the marathon at which the bombing took place; and why it was vehemently denied that a bomb drill was going on. For this current set of questions, I’m grateful for the help of Asia Times Online’s Bostonian readers.

Orwellian indeed.  And Bush is opening a Library when he should be in a cell.

What amazes me is not that this happened or how it was handled or even the official story itself. These are all pretty much par for the course.   After all even Nixon though the white wash of the JFK assassination was a load of dingos kidneys.

No what amazes me is how gullible the public is and how easily it will swallow the stories force fed to them on this and every other matter.   Those that seem to be the least likely to question the official story seem to be those of the upper crust economically. The professionals engineers for Microsoft and Dell and Apple and IBM. The Doctors and specialists in the health car professions, especially those affiliated with big hospitals. Tenured professors and middle management types. The bourgeois for lack of a better term.

Nearly all of whom are doing quite nicely as the rest of the economy is slowly sinking.  They also are those who are buying into the “recovery” that isn’t.  Like the guest post by James H. Kunstler – at Tyler Durden’s Zerohedge explains.

It’s especially remarkable that a nation with fairly deep traditions of free thought and speech, with durable institutions for purveying them (a free press), should sleepwalk into a captivity of pervasive, systematic, institutionalized lying and fraud. The people of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia suffered under such regimes at gunpoint, with boots on their necks, but in the USA of Bush and now Obama, we have conveyed ourselves to very similar circumstances willingly, like little children skipping through the gates of Disney World, with gleeful disregard for the consequences.

James H. Kunstler in this post gives a good rundown of how we got here, will stay here and what the government has been doing ever since that untidy situation in 2008, to keep the Titanic from sinking.  That what we are seeing is a contraction fed to a large extent by what he calls then end of “peak-cheap-oil”.

These calamities of capital mis-management occurred in tandem with trouble in the energy sector of the economy. The shorthand for the trouble was encapsulated in the term “Peak Oil.” For practical purposes, it should have been called “Peak Cheap Oil,” because these years in the mid-2000s marked the end of oil that was affordable under the terms of how American society was set up to run.

At every level of American society – and for Europe and Japan as well – the end of cheap, affordable oil had rather dire implications for all the common operations of life in advanced societies: food production, transportation, commerce, and especially finance. Finance – the management of a society’s accumulated wealth – was the most abstract of these systems and the one most easily upset by the implications of Peak Cheap Oil. The reason was that oil happened to be the “master resource” for generating economic growth and Peak Cheap Oil provoked a particular problem with money: Without continued growth of 3 to 5 percent a year, not enough new wealth could be generated to cover the interest on loans in the financial system. In effect, the whole system of interest became impaired, and without interest you couldn’t have the normal operations of banking.

It was pretty elementary. But the American public was not disposed to understand it, because everything in the U.S. economy worked on revolving credit, including the issuance of money itself (which was loaned into existence by the banks), and the public was addicted to debt. Loaning money into existence, of course, implied the creation of ever more debt, which came burdened with interest payments.

The American public, the media and even Washington refuses to look at any of this. All still wanting to believe that this depression/recession is temporary and will right itself eventually.  The whole drive toward austerity is reliant of this fiction.  So the books and figures are manipulated to give it as much credence as possible.  The only reason the economy has not tanked is because the Federal Reserve keeps funneling money into the financial sector. Pay no attention to that bankrupt bank behind the FED, this is the great and powerful Wizard of OZ.  All making excuses and rationalizing the governments actions at every step.

So these bourgeois with their 401Ks and personal retirement accounts and investments are the ones that Washington is trying to protect from financial disaster.  Making sure the Stock Market does not take a nose dive and there by bursting the fantasy bubble.

And these same folks will keep watching  their cable TV shows  with the right convinced that the “market works damnit” and the center left pushing their green or what ever agenda and both rationalizing why no financier is in Jail.  All convinced that it’s back to business as usual. All gleefully and naively watching the first 10 min of CNN before turning on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

The theme park is open for business and the “help” gets the shaft.

Rick Perry has declared West Texas a disaster area and wants federal aid from the government he would rather not be a part of.

A number of states have legalized or decriminalized marijuana use in opposition to federal law.   With more to come. As well as gay marriage.

There are also states that are fighting the Supreme Court decision on election moneys and other issues.

And article in Der Spiegle wonders if independent terrorists will be come the norm.

During the 1950s and 1960s when I grew up such things would have been unheard of.  Acting independently – outside of any group, let alone national interest – did not cross anyone’s mind.  People aligned themselves with the nation they live in.  Then within the local group they were a part of.  You were and American (or German, or Italian, or Canadian, or Greek….) and that was that.

This all started to change during the 1960s beginning with the civil rights movement and then with the anti-war movement. All coinciding with the advances in global communications.  Till now we are able to communicate with and find out who, what, why and where in nearly every corner of the globe.  We can now find out through web sites and chat rooms and videos not just what governments are doing and thinking but the people who live in any place we wish to know about think and feel and are doing.

The Arab spring protests via twitter and videos from the people themselves.  In an interview of France 24 the question “A new trend of jihadism via Internet? “ is asked.

F24: Is there a reason to be worried about widespread radicalisation via Internet?

DT: Online jihadists spreading propaganda can promote the attacks, so for them these attacks were a coup. The Boston Marathon attacks were pretty brazen. Online jihadist leaders know they have numerous followers on the web, but few people end up actually following through on their recommendations [to carry out attacks]. But even if ten new people end up taking action and plotting terrorist attacks, for them it’s a victory.

Not just radical Islam but radical anything. I doubt seriously that the Tea Party would have become a force with out the communication infrastructure we had in place that allowed all these disgruntled people to align with each other.  More and more we are seeing people coming together along some ideological or religious or economic lines. But still want and need the stability and continuity  and security of some larger national lines as well.  But how can one feel part of a country when little of what they have is even made there ? When the company you work for and the mortgage on your house is owned by some conglomerate half way around the world?

When you government seems to be more responsive to people who don’t even live here. Going after it’s own citizens who do not fit with the current governments philosophy and ideals.  You no longer feel comfortable with your country so you latch on to some ideal or group outside your country and try to make you country fit this ideal so you can feel comfortable again.  Even if the people who support it live outside your area or country.  And every time you walk down the street you see someone who reminds you of just out of place you feel. Even the place you were born and grew up in looks foreign to you now.   All of this making you feel how your country is becoming less and less your country.  Enough to make one feel schizoid.  Globalism has not just taken away peoples jobs but is taking away their feeling of belonging as well.

This not a defense of nationalism. Quite the contrary it is showing how nationalism is becoming moot.

National instruments, Ukraine - flikr creative commons

I read a piece not long ago on the origins of the popularity of Adolph Hitler and what he was saying and who he was speaking to.  It was focused on Pan-Germanism – the Ethnocentric movement to unify all those of German heritage. One of the keystones of Hitler’s appeal in Austria, Hungary and Prussia – to name but a few.  A very strong and deep seated almost tribal belief and/or feeling. Much more than some political nationalism. More a nativism.

When it was stated that the Soviets won WWII for the Allies, they were corrected. It was the Russians winning it for Russia by shear strength of will. What Finns call Sisu or the British “Pure bloody mindedness” . Fighting on not for some political ideal but for their Russian kinfolk and heritage.

It was this deep seated feeling of native-ism and cultural/religious tribalism that was responsible for one of the last bloody conflicts on the European continent. Resulting in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia republic. Resulting in no less than 8 separate autonomous states.  Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia. The only things that kept this entities together as one republic were the heavy handed tactics of Marshal Tito and a lot of Soviet troops.

I was not as aware of how deeply seated this situation was until after viewing Michael Palin’s New Europe series. Where he visits most of the countries that emerged after the breakup and fall of the Soviet Union.   Examples being those I sited above as well as Trans-Dniestr - a break away territory from Moldavia.  They even fought a civil war over it. The people there speak Russian and consider themselves mostly Russian. It’s what binds them together.  Which is a bit precarious since  Trans-Dniestr  lies between the rest of Moldavia and the Ukraine – where proclaiming ones Russian is NOT a way to win friends and influence people.

The Ukraine is very  much anti-Russian and speaking anything but Ukrainian is at best frowned upon.

Moldavia itself has more a kindred connection with it’s western neighbor Romania, where the main language spoken is Romanian. In fact there was a movement to unite both countries into one. They are still working to get some closer relationship established.

Then you have Kaliningrad Oblast.  It sits on the Baltic Sea right between Lithuania and Poland. Part of Russia but not connected to it. It’s population is nearly all Russian.

When people spoke of the country it was more in a cultural/clannish or even ethic way than political.   Nearly all – if not all – having deep traditions, beliefs and backgrounds all their own and going back many hundreds of years. With music and arts that are still practiced and they are proud of. And a great deal of passion for all of it.

Which of course brings me to this country.  It’s a common misconception that the USA began as this “Great melting pot” where everyone would get along just fine. I would not say it as such. More like masses of people who where trying to escape various forms of oppression and poverty in there country of origin. Just as they are mostly today. And that they did not so much “get along” as they avoided contact unless necessary.  Easy enough to do initially with gobs of land to dot it in after the natives were removed.  Each keeping for a long time there own culture and traditions.

With large populations of Scandinavians in the upper peninsula of Michigan and Wisconsin.  Germans in and around Iowa. Irish in the North East. And each city with enclaves of various nationalities – each grouped separately.

The US has not real culture or tradition of it’s own. It’s a mish-mash. And it still goes on with new immigrants associating and living mostly with those of the same background.  What Americans refer to as American culture and tradition is something that has been manufactured by some Wall Street firm and marketed to them by some Madison Av. advertising firm.   Mom, the girl next store and apple pie sold to you with a 20% off mark down. All clean, white and christian.

But this facade is wearing thin and the veneer showing cracks.  And I feel that one of the things we are seeing these days is a pent up desire to be able to define ones self and ones group by something more than a superficial view as sold by the media. What ever that maybe.

This innate need for some kind of tribal belonging trumps politics, even though it appears to manifest it self there. Indeed I fell that it is one aspect of what drives the expanding political divide we are having.   That our advances in communications have had the opposite effect on our relationships enabling people to align themselves in more deeper in a tribal and clannish manner but also creating more divisions by the increased contact with each one.

This false America of white anglo saxon christians is fading away at break neck speed as more and more  groups show their need to be recognized and respected. The immigration issue and even the gun issue plays into this as white America becomes just one more of a number of different clans. And the election of a black man to president makes this doubly obvious.

When I hear someone say “America is a christian nation” the word white is never said but always implied.

That this country will be able to remain as on without some very oppressive measures would be surprising.  And extreme oppression would not be tolerated by anyone regardless of their ideology or ethnic background.

Of course Wall Street will try to make hey on this as they do everything. Like and addicted gambler they will try to bet on the outcome and influence it, but I do believe they will fail since it’s always the gambler that has to get out of town fast.

And we are seeing this now not only in political realignment but in the continued change in physical/geographical demographics as well.   One can denigrate this behavior as archaic and insist that we here and elsewhere should be above all this.  But it is deep within the human psyche and goes back thousands of years. The basis for racial distrust and hatred.  And will take many generations to rise above.

But give all of this the one thing I find missing from the verbiage from both the right and the left is passion. Any strong expression of how they feel.  It’s nearly all what I call “head stuff”. Thought rational that lacks real feeling. The kind you got from the civil rights marches and MLK. And the peace movements of the 1960s and RFK.

Too many separate groups each with their own agenda which they may feel strongly about but not passionately shared by all. So each are easily manipulated.    A cumulative expression of passion on a single issue was last seen in this country during the 1930s and the rise of unionism and socialist though.  And most of these folks where white working class. Now quickly becoming a minority.

How can you become passionate about the right to own a big house and snazzy car ?   It’s totally superficial.   Which may also explain why despite what is going on economically and politically there has not been any real uprising. And why it has been fairly easy for TPTB to put down any attempt.

Even the so called tea party has fizzled.  No real passion there just a group of pissed of immature spoiled brats.

Our lack of any real cultural heritage and there fore lack of real passion is what is keeping the status quo alive.

Hunger March - flickr/wikimedia commons

My old education institution in Florida – The Univ. Of Central Florida that was originally called Florida Technological Univ. – has had it’s own brush with a plot for mass violence.  The person who was plotting this however committed suicide before carrying it out.   Thought he did have the required implements of destruction.

UCF police said they received a fire alarm call around 12:20 a.m. As they responded to that call, police then received a 911 call reporting a man with a gun.

When police arrived, they found a student with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. They also found a bag of improvised explosive devices, along with a handgun and an assault weapon. - Central Florida News 13

We may never really know the motivations behind this individual or his actions and proposed actions but it’s safe bet is was some personal problem or agenda that drove him to it.

There a those who like to see such situations as some idealistic political and/or religious or some other kind of plot. In most cases those who are involved are just people  who feel they have been pushed too far and are generally just really pissed off and desperate.  Desperation can drive people to do things and behave in a manner they would not under other circumstances.

If one looks at the history to most political and/or economic upheavals, they were generally started by people who had “Had enough” and were desperate. Even the Russian revolution caught Lenin by surprise when it began even though he and others had plotted the over throw of the Tzar, it was a spontaneous event  by desperate people that initiated it.  The same for the French revolution and nearly all other such situations.

And now with the current situation in Europe and the EU ministers decision on the Cyprus bank bail outs, they are sowing and fertilizing the seeds of another upheaval.

There’s been a great deal of discussion of how the deal came about, with a particularly detailed account at the Wall Street Journal. The new stance at the creditor nations and the ECB is that there will be “private sector participation” which is bureaucrat-speak for haircuts to the people who funded the banks. And in the fracas over renegotiating the pact so as to make it less unpalatable to the locals, the Eurozone officials have made clear they don’t care how Anastasiades skins this particular cat as long as he comes up with €5.8 billion from local deposits. Banks were due to be closed Monday on Cyprus for a holiday; officials are now considering imposing a bank holiday on Tuesday. Funds have been frozen in the meantime, producing what is likely to be the emblematic photo of this crisis, of a man trying to break into his bank branch:

. . . . .

Now the EU officials could easily calm nervous depositors by announcing an ECB-backstopped deposit guarantee, instead of the current national system which depends on not-exactly-credible central banks. Germany and its fellow surplus countries have hesitated about proceeding with the necessary steps to further economic integration (notice how the plan to implement eurozone wide bank supervision, which Germany insisted was a precondition to Eurozone-level deposit guarantees, has languished?). Germany is trying to maintain policies that are contradictory: it wants to continue to have large trade surpluses, yet not fund its trade partners; its wants debtors to meet their obligations, yet refuses to allow either enough in the way of fiscal deficits or monetary easing to keep debtor countries from falling into deflationary spirals, which assure default. Germany’s failure to relent on any of these conditions means that what breaks will be the financial system. – Naked Capitalism

It took FDR meeting with the heads of the unions and communists and socialist parties to convince him that this country was very close to another revolution in the 1930s.  It was this sort of situation that brought Hitler to power and also brought down a number of leaders in other countries. People are not stupid and when they see that they are being sacrificed for the good of those in the upper crust..when they feel they have no say or recourse…when they feel desperate, they will eventually take matters into their own hands.

The PTB need to realize and be aware that it’s groups of highly desperate and pissed of people that will force a change in the current situation for good or bad. Not some high minded organized plot by some subversive element. Though these elements will often take credit for it, they generally are not the instigators.

But they’re our sons-a-bitches”

Supposedly attributed to FDR or one of his cabinet members when referring to the South American dictators we were supporting. Primarily Samosa.

I bring this up because it’s very representative of the the kind of thinking that goes on even today.   A kind of primitive tribal/herd/clan mentality.  That one is to support one of their own regardless of their current and/or past transgressions simply because they are one of their own.  Usually but not always based on some ethnic/racial/cultural sameness.  Combined with religious and financial classes as well.

It’s what brought Hitler to power and enabled Germans to rally around him, all the while ignoring his monstrosities.  It’s what what pushed the Russians on to defeat Hitler’s armies.  And what broke apart and empowered those involved with the war in the former Yugoslavia after the fall of Tito.

As well as what is behind all the problems in the Middle east. It’s also why there are those who will support policies and people who would not be in there best interest, since their support is not based on anything logical or even practical  Their support is based on and emotional them vs us.

Why there are those who vilified the policies of Bush and support the same policies and actions by Obama.  Obama is one of US and not one of Them.    And Obama takes care of his own. The upper crust, well healed professional Bourgeois with their expensive houses and expensive cars and 401Ks with a tonne of money invested.

There is no amount of logical, practical, fact based arguments that will convince these people otherwise.   One can rail against them – if that gives you comfort. But it will not change their thinking because it has little to do with thought.  Just remember what it took to change Germany – who still has neo-Nazi followers. Two world wars and 40 years of cold war as two separate countries.  And they still look down on some non-Germans with disgust.

We like to think with all our advanced technology and science that we as humans have risen above such things. The sad reality is we have not.

Carlos Sayadyan - Famine / wikimedia commons - flickr

We like to compare ourselves to Europe and the rest of the world  a lot. Our economists do it, educators do it, health professionals do it even some politicians do it. In nearly every subject imaginable.

Those that like to extort what they call American exceptionalism and those that like to show how out of touch and behind we actually are.

Where here is one subject where most of the world has beat us from the time people originally settled here.

Famines.

Yep…and they have had a bunch of them. Sometimes killing a million or more people from starvation and/or disease and plagues. We think of these as something that happens only in third world underdeveloped countries. Not so.

The closest we have come to the kind of famines that the rest of the world endured was Year Without a Summer where there were massive crop failures in the eastern part of the country.   Even then farmers could pack up and leave and move west, which many did.

Those even in Europe did not always have that option and actually could not except to immigrate here. This was not an easy task and for most far to expensive.  A good number of these famines were responsible for the immigration to this country. Like the Great Irish Famine in which up to 1,500,000 people immigrated

While the famine was responsible for a significant increase in emigration from Ireland, of anywhere from 45% to nearly 85% depending on the year and the county, it was not the sole cause. Nor was it even the era when mass emigration from Ireland commenced. That can be traced to the middle of the 18th century, when some 250,000 people left Ireland to settle in the New World alone, over a period of some 50 years. From the defeat of Napoleon to the beginning of the famine, a period of 30 years, “at least 1,000,000 and possibly 1,500,000 emigrated”.^[89] However, during the worst of the famine, emigration reached somewhere around 250,000 in one year alone, with far more emigrants leaving from western Ireland than any other part.^[90]

A large number of which immigrated to this country.

The classic image of an Irish immigrant is led to a certain extent by racist and anti-Catholic stereotypes. In modern times, in the United States, the Irish are largely perceived as hard workers. Most notably they are associated with the positions of police officer, firefighter, Roman Catholic Church leaders and politicians in the larger Eastern Seaboard metropolitan areas.Irish Americans number over 35 million, making them the second largest reported ethnic group in the country, after German Americans. Historically, large Irish American communities have been found in Philadelphia; Chicago; Boston; New York City; Detroit; New England; Baltimore; Pittsburgh; St. Paul, Minnesota; Buffalo; Broome County; Los Angeles; and the San Francisco Bay Area. Many cities across the country have annual St Patrick’s Day parades;The nation’s largest is in New York City — one of the world’s largest parades. The parade in Boston is closely associated with Evacuation Day, when the British left Boston in 1776 during the American War of Independence. Not to be forgotten are the 56% of the people who claim Irish ancestry who are Protestant and populate large areas along the Appalachian Mountains and the southeastern United States, especially in Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas and Virginia

Before the Great Hunger (“Irish Potato Famine“), in which over a million died and more emigrated,^[51] there had been the Penal Laws which had already resulted in significant emigration from Ireland.^{[citation needed]}

According to the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, in 1790 there were 400,000 Americans of Irish birth or ancestry out of a total white population of 3,100,000. Half of these Irish Americans were descended from Ulster people, and half were descended from the people of Connaught, Leinster and Munster.

According to U.S. Census figures from 2000, 41,000,000 Americans claim to be wholly or partly of Irish ancestry, a group that represents more than one in five white Americans.

Not only immigration but social, political and economic upheaval can be traced to famines. Most notably the French and Russian revolutions.

A history of not having enough to eat also influences the way one eats.  Unlike here where we are used to putting whatever we can grab into our mouths and fast as possible,  in Europe – and especially in France – meals are social occasions where one takes time to savor each part of each course. And when you don’t have much of any one item, you have as many items as you can. Hence the tradition of having multi course meals.  Each served separately and prepared separately – since refrigeration came much, much later and each item had to be fresh.

These social occasions were where you talked over your day and what not.

Food wise this country has never really had it as bad as a lot of the rest of the world. Even during the depression of the 1930s, we did not ever have a situation where 100s of thousands of people died of starvation.

At least not yet………………