Fascism: The Revolt Of The Elite Against The People Who Serve Them

In a piece on Alternet today, there's a post descrying 15 symptoms of the coming, inevitable, probably fatal fracture of USer 'democracy.' (What, I thought, only 15?--W).

I think it was the Italian, anti-Catholic/anti-fascist scholar, Gramsci-- murdered by Mussolini in prison for thought crimes--who is the source, or at least the inspiration, for the sentiment in the hed, above, as well as of the admonitions which follow:

15 Signs American Society Is Coming Apart at the Seams
By David DeGraw, Amped Status. Posted November 21, 2009.

Are we nearing a tipping point as rapacious elites push a heavily armed populace too far? (Is Ratzi a Nazi?--W)

(Editor's note: The following is an edited excerpt from the Amped Status report, "The Critical Unraveling of U.S. Society.")

The economic elite have launched an attack on the U.S. public and society is unraveling at an increased rate. You may have missed it in the mainstream news media, but statistical societal indicators are reading red across the board. Let’s look at the top 15 statistics that prove we are under attack.

1) The inequality of wealth in the United States is soaring to an unprecedented level. The U.S. already had the highest inequality of wealth in the industrialized world prior to the financial crisis. Since the crisis, which has hit the middle class and poor much harder than the top 1 percent, the gap between the top 1 percent and the remaining 99 percent of the U.S. population has grown to a record high...

We see, already, the direction this is going. There is no need to proceed further with the exact enumeration of the ills that have brought us to this pretty pass. We'd all have idiosyncratically different lists pointing to the same phenomenon: the increasing disparity in the participation in the "goods" of the social order between the lives of the ordinary folks and their industrial, financial, political, and military overlords. It is increasingly obvious, and --absent serious social disruption-- increasingly inevitable.

It's a downward trajectory, cultural and social gravity now more an more in control.

Never before has the United States had so many citizens with so little means, little to no income and heavy debt. Debt and costs of living have now shackled U.S. citizens just as they have shackled people throughout the world. The economic hit men have now hit the United States as well and millions of American citizens are now effectively sentenced to a slow death. (The suppurating secret sore of the "credit" economy is how perilously close to indenture are its most enthusiastic participants--W)

Economic Imperial blowback has hit the mainland.

And the clock is ticking louder by the day…

And here’s two more facts for you:

14) The gun and ammunition manufacturing industry in the United States has over 200 companies producing billions of dollars in annual revenues. This huge manufacturing base cannot fulfill demand quickly enough. The demand for guns and ammunition has hit a record high and the gun industry cannot produce enough bullets to keep up with orders.

Americans are arming themselves to the teeth!

15) In the past year, 100 new armed militia groups have been formed, as militia members have doubled in numbers. Federal authorities are gravely concerned about the “uptick in militia activities." One federal authority recently said, “All it’s lacking is a spark. I think it’s only a matter of time before you see threats and violence."

So let’s break down these numbers.

You have a population of 50 million people who are in desperate need of money, they most likely have no health insurance and can’t afford to get health care or help of any kind. Part of this population probably also has loved ones who can’t get life sustaining medical treatments, or loved ones who have already died due to lack of costly medical treatment. The clock is ticking loud for these people and they are running out of options fast, and time delayed is time closer to death.

While the richest 1 percent have never had it so good, a significant percentage of the U.S. population now has firsthand experience in this. Millions upon millions of Americans are poor, broke, struggling, starving, desperate… and armed.

We are sitting on a powder keg!

We are now witnessing the critical unraveling of U.S. society.

Now THERE'S a fucking Jeremiad, innit.

I haven't always known both the political and the physical life-worlds I inhabited were so delicate. Until the beginning of the Reagan years, I never thought I'd be around at the fall, of either one. And it looks like now they'll both go down together; in which, one supposes, there may fe found a kernel of poetic justice. I guess mebbe mostly we all thought it was more robust than it was...democracy, I mean. Mebbe we never though it could hapen here, or that they'd so aggressively game the system and violate the previous boundaries of the acceptable.

Me and the dogs? I'm armed, lightly, but enough to mebbe repel the first wave...We'll git a couple of before they get us...