The Debt Ceiling

"Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing? They have passed like rain in the mountains, like wind in the meadow. The days have come down in the West behind the hills into shadow. How did it come to this?" - Theodan King, The Two Towers movie (and an apt question to ask these days. Where is our Frodo? Who will destroy The One Ring?)

This is a political rant.

What do you think of this debt ceiling thing with the US? Most people seem
to think Congress is posturing and something will pass at the last moment,
and so are not taking it seriously.

I think if they do not pass something, the fallout will be swift and very serious, and there will be no hope of an economic recovery for at least a decade, probably longer. Maybe not even in what is left of my lifetime.

Does anyone have a clue as to what will happen? What will folks do when they have to start caring for Grandma because Social Security and Medicare has run out?

Then the big corporations will have what little money we have left, won't they?

And who will be blamed? Democrats? Republicans? The means of communication are completely controlled - oh, you may think there is freedom of speech but there is no free speech. Just look at the BS going on in England with Murdoch empire and consider the greater implications there. Tight-fisted, with the hammer down, that's the press these days. You are only reading and hearing what *they* want you to hear. You only know what *they* think you should know.

I never dreamed I would see this in my lifetime. I never thought it would happen, period. And to be sure I think it is all needless - it is all a big grab by the greedy, individuals and corporations alike, and they are quite willing to upend the world to obtain their goals and amass their wealth. The fact that they have snowed so many with "social and moral" issues is key - and a great testament to the stupidity and lack of thinking among the masses.

That our education system has failed has not been a mistake, I think. Keeping people unable to think by making us stupid - by taking away liberal arts and not teaching philosophy, for example - is key to keeping  us under the thumb.

This is a power grab, you know. As a friend of mine writes, "The wealthy are working very hard to destroy social democracy and restore the control of the gilded elite. This is happening, and succeeding, all over the world. Whether it is austerity in the UK, or in Ireland, or it Greece, or the US states stripping their public servants of the bargaining  rights and benefits, or the threat to social care for the elderly and health care for the ill everywhere, it is all part of the same shocking thing - the determination of the rich elite to withdraw their money from the state and deny ordinary working people rights and benefits.

They want wage slaves, nothing more."

And yet for some reason, we still vote for these bastards.

Religion is of course right there helping to keep everyone on the lower level, raising fears and alarms over ghosts and specters, all designed to keep us from thinking about the real concerns.

The lowest common denominator has won, I fear, and this country will fall. It is the way of things, I guess, this rising and falling, but it would be nice if the world could all rise as one and we all could keep and maintain some decent standard of living. Greed is the only reason this doesn't happen.

But we have been crushed. We the people have fallen. We're too busy sitting in front of our little computers to pay attention, trapped in some cyber-bubble, our own version of bread and circuses. We're deaf and blind to the real world and the reality of what is happening.

Woe unto us all. Our days are numbered, and those numbers are short.