Conservatives of the American middle class have worked assiduously to protect the reduced tax rates for the ultra-rich and this has done at least as much damage to America as what the ultra-rich have been doing anyway in their looting of the country. This middle class facilitation of the looting by the ultra-rich means there's little to no chance of any middle class existing for their own children. The paradox of wealth is that achieving it the way it has been done, particularly by those of Baby Boomer age, means their own dynasties have no chance of achieving the wealth of their parents.
Had the conservative American middle class not served the ultra-rich as they have and instead worked toward maintaining or improving the distribution of wealth in the country, the economy would not have polarized so far toward Haves and Have Nots as it has in the years since Reagan. This reached its nadir with Obama as nothing was done regarding the tax rates on the rich and those low tax rates have become the de facto standard thus guaranteeing the ongoing upward shift of the bulk of the capital in private hands.
That the greed of the middle class will prevent their own children from achieving the same level of success is a hard irony but their blindness to everything but money prevents them from appreciating what they do. One obvious example of that is how Pope Francis and the Vatican have been attacked most recently regarding climate change but also over anything he has said about an equitable distribution of wealth in the world. There hasn't been this much animosity toward Catholicism since the days of the Forefathers. The superficiality of religious belief in conservatives is amply demonstrated by how they have turned against the Vatican, all the while loudly proclaiming their own faith(s).
While I don't consider the destruction of the financial future for the children to be anything close to funny, it amuses me tremendously to hear conservatives talk of a War on the Church when these are precisely the people who are waging it. The Republican party has been assaulting Pope Francis on a regular basis ever since he became Pope but they really went off the top when Francis spoke of climate change and there has been a parade of Republicans attacking him, the most recent being Jeb Bush yesterday. That Catholic conservatives do this too shows their spiritual depth is about that of a water strider (i.e. an insect which can walk across water but never actually gets wet).
Note: there has only been one Catholic President in America's history (JFK) ... and they shot him.
Where this gets supremely absurd is the greed for money has been followed by a similar type of greed for righteousness insofar as what they do is good and what everyone else does is not. The classic hypocrisy in this is when they defend the low tax rates because they call themselves 'financial conservatives' but disavow any support for an imperialist military agenda, all the while promoting it by supporting those who propagate it. The darkest irony of all is in conservatives decrying what the military does and yet they do nothing to stop it so long as it's someone else's kid who goes off to fight in it.
When societies polarize so far toward Haves and Have Nots, historically that has led to revolution but, frankly, I really don't care. That kind of melodrama is for the hacks at CNN and an example of that comes from yesterday's 'credible' threat at a Philadelphia naval station which ran as CNN's typically over-dramatic headline but is nowhere to be seen today. That threat was as inane as the rest of them but it's not likely they will be able to top the absurdity of the 'credible' threat of exploding terrorist SCUBA divers from some years ago.
In my own view, revolution is less likely than an interminable mediocrity but reckless warring is part of what took down Tsarist Russia. The combination of a war with Japan and subsequently a war with Austria and Germany is what motivated the Bolsheviks to revolt. That situation is not so different from that which exists in America now as there was immense wealth at the top of the pyramid in Russian royalty and ill-advised military activity driven at that level meant the Bolsheviks revolted and wiped out all of them. Lenin turned Marxism into Communism and the Soviet Union which came of it endured for about seventy years.
There is a continuing defense of the militarization of the American police force, all the while saying this is not a police state. This demonstrates the same obtuse perspective of history as the greed for wealth and the premise is apparently they believe a police state comes about as a result of some type of Houdini-esque magic trick (i.e. one day the land is free and the next day it is a police state). The reality of such things is they come slowly and Germany is a prime example of that. Germans are not NAZIs and yet they were lulled by the leadership to accept the increasing militarization of police until it reached the point at which they couldn't stop it. Whether it can be stopped in America remains to be seen but the process is almost identical and any expectation of a different result is at best fanciful and at worst viciously disingenuous.
Had the conservative American middle class not served the ultra-rich as they have and instead worked toward maintaining or improving the distribution of wealth in the country, the economy would not have polarized so far toward Haves and Have Nots as it has in the years since Reagan. This reached its nadir with Obama as nothing was done regarding the tax rates on the rich and those low tax rates have become the de facto standard thus guaranteeing the ongoing upward shift of the bulk of the capital in private hands.
That the greed of the middle class will prevent their own children from achieving the same level of success is a hard irony but their blindness to everything but money prevents them from appreciating what they do. One obvious example of that is how Pope Francis and the Vatican have been attacked most recently regarding climate change but also over anything he has said about an equitable distribution of wealth in the world. There hasn't been this much animosity toward Catholicism since the days of the Forefathers. The superficiality of religious belief in conservatives is amply demonstrated by how they have turned against the Vatican, all the while loudly proclaiming their own faith(s).
While I don't consider the destruction of the financial future for the children to be anything close to funny, it amuses me tremendously to hear conservatives talk of a War on the Church when these are precisely the people who are waging it. The Republican party has been assaulting Pope Francis on a regular basis ever since he became Pope but they really went off the top when Francis spoke of climate change and there has been a parade of Republicans attacking him, the most recent being Jeb Bush yesterday. That Catholic conservatives do this too shows their spiritual depth is about that of a water strider (i.e. an insect which can walk across water but never actually gets wet).
Note: there has only been one Catholic President in America's history (JFK) ... and they shot him.
Where this gets supremely absurd is the greed for money has been followed by a similar type of greed for righteousness insofar as what they do is good and what everyone else does is not. The classic hypocrisy in this is when they defend the low tax rates because they call themselves 'financial conservatives' but disavow any support for an imperialist military agenda, all the while promoting it by supporting those who propagate it. The darkest irony of all is in conservatives decrying what the military does and yet they do nothing to stop it so long as it's someone else's kid who goes off to fight in it.
When societies polarize so far toward Haves and Have Nots, historically that has led to revolution but, frankly, I really don't care. That kind of melodrama is for the hacks at CNN and an example of that comes from yesterday's 'credible' threat at a Philadelphia naval station which ran as CNN's typically over-dramatic headline but is nowhere to be seen today. That threat was as inane as the rest of them but it's not likely they will be able to top the absurdity of the 'credible' threat of exploding terrorist SCUBA divers from some years ago.
In my own view, revolution is less likely than an interminable mediocrity but reckless warring is part of what took down Tsarist Russia. The combination of a war with Japan and subsequently a war with Austria and Germany is what motivated the Bolsheviks to revolt. That situation is not so different from that which exists in America now as there was immense wealth at the top of the pyramid in Russian royalty and ill-advised military activity driven at that level meant the Bolsheviks revolted and wiped out all of them. Lenin turned Marxism into Communism and the Soviet Union which came of it endured for about seventy years.
There is a continuing defense of the militarization of the American police force, all the while saying this is not a police state. This demonstrates the same obtuse perspective of history as the greed for wealth and the premise is apparently they believe a police state comes about as a result of some type of Houdini-esque magic trick (i.e. one day the land is free and the next day it is a police state). The reality of such things is they come slowly and Germany is a prime example of that. Germans are not NAZIs and yet they were lulled by the leadership to accept the increasing militarization of police until it reached the point at which they couldn't stop it. Whether it can be stopped in America remains to be seen but the process is almost identical and any expectation of a different result is at best fanciful and at worst viciously disingenuous.
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