Americans of all stripes seem poised to renounce with a certain finality any shred of unselfishness or social responsibility in an understandable rejection of “government” as we have come to know it in the latter days of the plutocracy, as the oligarchs of Wall Street complete their vacuum-cleaning of the incomes and assets of the drowning American middle class.
Can you blame good-hearted Americans for rejecting the calls of Keynesians to spend even more money on projects to be chosen by a kept Congress? More pork for the friends of the Democrats this time, when we just finished watching the Republicans enrich Halliburton and Blackwater (now Xe) and untold others in military Keynesianism and financial deregulation, both now getting a second wind under Obomba?
Americans are a self-selected group of self-reliant risk-takers and establishment-leave-takers. It is my guess that the majority of Americans are ready to leave the existing establishment in their dust. Whether they succeed in creating a new American social contract, with a government that works for them and not the elite—or are ground down under the heel of the empire for another century or more in a fascist neo-feudalism—this will be the central drama of the twenty-first century. The world is watching.
But let me say to Americans of the left and right and center, as you reject government, remember that you cannot reject each other, for no man or woman is an island, and as the probable failure of the American state unfolds, we will need each other’s help more than ever.
Happy Thanksgiving, gentle readers, and may your Black Friday be sustainable.
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