In other words, strap yourselves in for a ride. Social turmoil and turbulence is pretty much inevitable as the general population becomes more aware of how government, corporations and financial systems collude together to find better ways of fucking John Q. Public. Thanks Internet! No really, thanks.
But not to worry. In the meantime, we're getting quite good at entertaining ourselves and rationalizing the social cost of extreme wealth because of a fervent and patriotic belief that there is a particular kind of happiness and contentment that can only brought about by the ability to own a yacht with a helicopter pad.
That happens in a down economy. Without jobs and without expendable income, people have a lot more time to think and talk to each other. For the past 50 years, America has been riding high on an economic bubble powered by the main culture idea that's been foisted on all of us since we were kids: The American Dream.
The great American Dream of creating your own destiny and making your fortune. Sold to us on the promise that if you work hard enough, for long enough, your efforts will be rewarded by granting you a standard of living that that can provide for you and your family. It also promised that if you worked harder and smarter than your peers, wealth could be obtained that was greater than anywhere else in the world. Is that still the case today? I don't think anyone can seriously answer this question without facing some stark economic facts.
The Dream is the reason foreigners flocked to America, and it's the reason for the great sense of pride many in this country have and still continue to have today. While politicians debate as to what constitutes "real" American values, (by claiming their own religious/political/ideological beliefs are what really set this standard), it is, ironically most often these same people who ignore the pain and suffering of what's happening to the people they supposedly represent.
For the past 40 years or so, the terms for The Dream have changed drastically; but not all at once. Little by little, our economic and political freedoms have been slowly eroded over time by a collusion of private and pubic entities. Even our legislators are slaves to a system that must be bolstered by vast sums of money and political influence just to retain their jobs as "representatives."
A lot of people like to take sides in this debate, arguing over if it's government's fault, the people's fault or the corporations who are to blame.
Wealth inequality is back to the level before The Great Depression, when Robber Baron economic policies were the law of the land, child labor was commonplace, there was no such thing as medical insurance, and 18 hour days were normal working at a wage that was barely enough to feed and clothe yourself. Economically, we've been trending back in time where the disparity between wages and labor produced is at an all time low. In terms of how this wealth is distributed, it's a far uglier picture. Over 85% of the country's wealth is owned by a mere 20% of the population. The bottom 40% of Americans...that's over 100 million people, own a fraction of one percent of the country's wealth.
There's something drastically wrong with this picture. Such a system of wealth distribution could only exist with a gigantic (and largely imaginary) pile of virtual capital/credit circulating around; much more than could actually be tangibly translated into gold, labor and goods.
Did we really think this kind of system wouldn't collapse if it was left unchecked and deregulated? Did we really think The Dream would remain equally attainable, or at least just as attainable from when the idea was first proposed?
It's actually much worse than that. The system and network of wealth and power in this country have collectively re-written the laws so they can retain their stranglehold over the political process, and make The Dream, if it ever was attainable, even harder to access. Furthermore, this system has ensured its continued economic survival by outspending, out-lobbying and consequently expanding economic and legal freedoms for a select few, while curtailing and limiting individual freedoms for the vast majority. In short, if you want more freedom, specifically economic freedom, you have to pay through the nose.
Why didn't we notice this? Part of the explanation has to do with the length of time it took for this to occur, and some rather inconvenient truths about human nature that have been exploited. In psychology, there is something called the dispersion or diffusion of responsibility effect, where collective responsibility becomes inherently unstable and difficult to maintain as a group gets larger, especially over longer periods of time.
Diffusion of responsibility is a sociopsychological phenomenon whereby a person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction when others are present. Considered a form of attribution, the individual assumes that others either are responsible for taking action or have already done so. - Wikipedia
This effect operates not just on the individual level and group level, but on a much larger societal level. The best example of how this happens is referred to as the Tragedy of the Commons secnario:
In economics, the tragedy of the commons is the depletion of a shared resource by individuals, acting independently and rationally according to each one's self-interest, despite their understanding that depleting the common resource is contrary to their long-term best interests. - Wikipedia
The truth is our current economic, social and political climate didn't happen over the course of one or two bad administrations; it took several decades of selfish and willfully ignorant ineptitude . Which is why the vast majority don't even acknowledge that there's a huge problem to begin with. They've been institutionalized into a system that's forced fed the line that you have to work with what you have and there's little to nothing you can do to change it. The few who dare to question or wonder why the system exists as it does quickly find themselves alienated as unpatriotic at best, or written off as paranoid, crazy and delusional.
The best you can do is to market your fears in a fun book format, or learn to say things really loud and angry on AM radio shows and Cable TV. Some of us just create banal Internet distractions that help channel the public's collective sense of helplessness into something they can hopefully connect with. *wink wink*
If someone waved $20,000 a week at me to turn potentially inflammatory political writing into a zany comedy, I'd probably do it. In other words, otherwise bright people who could change or help to motivate change in the political system find it far easier (and more profitable) to go into some other business that is inherently selfish.
Those of you who believe in an invisible Sky God ought to pray very very hard that you never hear me at the karaoke bar. We all seem to sell out on some level or another, don't we? Especially after a few beers. We're really good at two things in this country: selling out and entertaining ourselves to social, political or actual death.
We love to entertain ourselves as Americans, with dreams and fantasies on the TV, and we're highly adept at making them cheap and affordable for the public. There is a rather large business of dream making in this country, and if you can make these dreams addictive or make people think they're only a click away, they become highly lucrative, in addition to providing a pacifying effect on the general population. Games, movies, happy pills and TV have become the poor man's gruel, mixed with just enough X drug to keep us feeling alive, yet sedated enough to keep us from being alive. As our standard and quality of life plummets, our technical ability to dispense massive amounts of dopamine to our own brains and pleasure centers has increased exponentially. Gives you that warm fuzzy feeling inside, doesn't it?
Many have tuned out the harsh realities of the outside world as something which is persistently annoying, and instead embrace some sort of collective delusion to keep from going mad. They feel as if there's nothing they can do about how shitty reality is, so they might as well drug themselves (with bullshit ideas or actual drugs) with whatever means they can afford.
It would take something on the scale of a massive social movement to bring about the change that is necessary to topple the cancerous power structures that are firmly woven into our body of laws that firmly support a status quo that entrenches inequality. Like most cancers, it's hard to destroy without destroying some of the body itself.
We might need need to do a round or two of political chemo. Perhaps the political equivalent of this would be dissolving the current Congress and possibly the Senate, along with certain high powered government positions. The problem is this type of option just isn't available through our Constitution. There's no legal precedent either, but it's one "crazy" solution that would severely disrupt external and internal negative influences of power inside our government. I wouldn't be opposed to putting term limits on corporate CEO's (fortune 500 companies) if Citizens United is going to be the law of the land. At this point, we should be putting all options on the table just to brainstorm.
If we're going to claim that our way of life really is the best in the world, and our great experiment in democracy hasn't failed, we should remind ourselves that the whole intent of our laws and a big part of our social values rests upon the achievement of three things: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not on the presumption that great financial wealth is the necessary fulcrum to achieve those ends.
It should be re-affirmed that the framers of the Constitution intended for us to achieve these values, even if we painted ourselves into a political, economic and legal corners over the course of time. At some point, most of them believed government and society would need the flexibility to be radically restructured, without all the fear of anarchy. In the end, fear keeps us paralyzed from doing anything that would make the biggest difference.
Our current "living and breathing" democracy is currently on life support. In the medical field, it's what they call "circling the drain." That's where you know the patient is gonna croak sometime in the near future...or maybe not. You just don't quite know yet. It depends on what you're willing to do to save them, and what the patient is willing to live with. Living life on life support, hooked up to a IV drip of pain killers while shitting into a bag isn't a particularly appealing quality of life.
As for the treatment, I don't know exactly what that is. I don't have all the answers. But the first solution to any problem is recognizing its size and scope. I think we're just beginning to realize this collectively as a culture. As this awareness spreads, so to will those who might have answers to the hard questions and tasks that lie ahead.