Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Robert Borosage: Conservative and Corporate Elites Using Economic Fear to Drive Us into Their Arms





The chances are now growing increasingly slim for effective progressive political and religious movements in the U.S., and the economic hardship that we can now expect due to the capitulation of American leaders of both liberal and conservative stripe to the corporatist puppet-masters pulling the strings of our government will only make those chances further diminish, as people turn to the rabid right out of desperation, as their only foreseeable saviors amidst economic chaos.


Conservative and corporate elites are stoking the turmoil, and using fear to panic a public into accepting harsh measures that would be otherwise unacceptable. The stock market tanks after the debt ceiling debacle (editor's note: Monday the Dow plunged more than 600 points). Standard & Poor's, the discredited and corrupted rating agency, rushes to downgrade U.S. debt, with such haste it doesn’t even get its math right. China’s news service announces the U.S. must roll back its bloated “welfare state” and its bloated military. The talk shows are inundated with pundits expounding the urgent need for the U.S. to get its deficits under control to regain its credit status.

Conservative and corporate elites are using fear to panic a public into accepting harsh measures that would be otherwise unacceptable: the totally manufactured hysteria over the deficit, which has been center-stage in D.C. for weeks now (and therefore center-stage around the world, due to the influence the U.S. still exerts on the global economy) is designed precisely to drive us into the arms of right-wing saviors.

To drive us into the arms of the men who preach obedience to us on behalf of their economic taskmasters.  There is an agenda at work here, and our salvation depends on recognizing it, and resisting the very men who assure us they are designated to save us at this point in history. 

Whether we'll be savvy enough to recognize the agenda and resist the false allure of lying promises of salvation is yet to be seen.

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