Ever ridden in a speeding car with a raging drunk at the wheel?
Yes, you have – we all have – because that’s the current state of the human race under the present generation of toxic elites.
An awesome article from Reuters Breakingviews about the roots of The Great Recession and the likelihood of another global financial crisis uses historical examples of collective delusion to explore the perils of society-wide denial. The piece by financial historian Edward Chancellor specifically describes them as a collective mindset of “extend and pretend” in which those who benefit from a toxic status quo are unwilling to change it, even when they know it must end in disaster.
Case in point, The Party of Rampant Corruption’s inability to capitalize on the bigotry, lies and corruption of The Party of Rampant Class Warfare in the United States right now. The Dems think they can win Republican seats in Congress by criticizing the same forms of financial misconduct they embrace themselves, as if allowing rich fools to continue to captain our foundering ship of state is preferable to stepping aside and allowing qualified, principled and sacrificial leaders to take the helm.
The two political protection rackets have given us a leaderless system bereft of the checks and balances which once preserved it. Meaningful change is not possible in the present House of Lords that our Congress has become, which exists solely to auction political protection to multinational corporations. Its 435 members now have an average net worth of more than $1 million, which is climbing fast.
This unsustainable state of affairs proves the sheer folly of a world with a single dominant power.
The human race is going to continue to stagger from political crisis to crisis so long as the failing United States leads it, just as we will continue to stagger between financial crises in a $78 trillion global economy with more than $230 trillion in debt careening about perilously below decks. A pile of fake money accrued by financial insiders at hedge funds and private equity firms, for whom currency is now irrelevant except as a scorecard.
These short-sighted financial elites were huge winners in The Great Recession they precipitated during the disastrous Reagan, Bush and Clinton presidencies, when profitable industries were allowed to regulate themselves. The final straw in the decline of the world’s greatest democracy was the U.S. Supreme Court’s treasonous Citizens United ruling, which gave Wall Street unlimited ability to purchase crooked politicians in 2010 and legally established corporations as people.
What kind of people?
Rich people. Like the Walton, Sackler and DeVos family billionaires who hide behind corporate alter egos like Wal-Mart, Purdue Pharma, and Amway.
The self-described “masters of the universe” on Wall Street are rich, but they are neither wise nor capable of leading by example. Which is why the species is in peril under their rule.
The Great Recession was a Depression for the masses whose residue remains ever present in an unstable global economy. It was a financial 9/11 for the world which justified business misconduct on a grand scale just as the terror attacks justified the rising police state here at home.
What’s the moral of the story?
The human race is adrift, floating toward an iron-bound coast with no means of navigation or propulsion. The likelihood of a positive outcome under its present inept leadership is remote.
The problem facing the species is that the ruling U.S. elites are drunk on power and no longer fit for global leadership, but refuse to relinquish the steering wheel to a designated driver. Instead of guiding the world toward a global economy, global government, and properly regulated global labor market in which workers have some dignity, our toxic elites are heading for another self-destructive bout of binge drinking and hereditary rule. Cheering madly at their own insipidity all the way.
To sum up the stupidity of Trump and the generation of toxic elites he represents: “We’re rich, ergo we must be right.”
Yeah … no.
Having these drunken fools at the levers of global power puts those of us who understand what’s going on in the uneviable position of praying for some kind of laudable setback. A selective and unlikely calamity that will jolt them from power while preserving the rest of us.
The odds of one occurring are remote.
What to do in the mean time?
You can either pray, fight the power of the orb’s new corporate royals, or join in the fun and have a drink. Most of the national military establishment, law enforcement, mainstream news media, organized religion, legal system, and academia have chosen the latter path of “extend and pretend.”
Reuters Breakingviews, which produced this article, is one of my favorite news teams because it asks “why” and delves into painful truths. Instead of ignoring them and drinking the proverbial Kool-Aid being handed out by the world’s paid liars.
Breakingviews is like a journalism SWAT team inside the larger Reuters institution, which is far more inclined to reflexively embrace Wall Street nonsense. Sadly, there is no political equivalent.
