Here's some cheery news!
Dims in the Senate are divided over whether and how much to fuck us poor serfs and peons over. Some--the moderates--think only a little is necessary; others, the conservatives--think a LOT is called for.
Interestingly, nobody, least of ALL Sir Barry, the Capitulator, thinks they shouldn't fuck us at all.
Learned Helplessness
Why do the Masters of the Universe bother to fuck around with the little people in such trivial ways, like slashing the safety net and opposing universal health care? It seems counter-intuitive. It seems you'd want a happy, healthy workforce. But your intuition would steer you wrong.
Because it is in their interest to have insecure, ill-paid, desperate workers toiling in fear of losing their jobs.
Gutting the safety net has the entirely advantageous consequences (to the Owners) of driving us proles more deeply into the debt of the oligarchs and bosses. Without a safety net of ANY kind, the "people" will be back in the situations of vassalhood, being UTTERLY dependent on the "mercy" of the master. The feudal power of life and death will once AGAIN be theirs by right.
The Owners of the country do NOT want their proles, serfs and vassals to enjoyl ANY security.
Therefore, universal health care (e.g.) is anathema, because control over access to health care gives the Owners tremendous leverage over the workers.
If the workers feel insecure, they won't organize,or resist, or oppose management other ways, for fear of retaliation and loss of jobs. An insecure work-force can be far more easily bullied into accepting reductions and limitations. Therefore ANYTHING the Owners can do to stimulate fear, unease, or insecurity is GOOD for them. A FRIGHTENED or INSECURE worker is a docile, malleable, exploitable worker.
Toothless Avatars
Almost every week the Office of soi disant "socialist" Senator Bernie Sanders issues another broadside against the capitalist, consumerist corpoRatocracy. Last week it was his "progressive deficit reduction plan." Bernie's role is mainly theatrical, keeping in mind that the whole thing is civic kabuki. He's a stock character. The Owners keep Bernie and his ilk (Kucenich, hitherto; Grayson, etc.) around to blunt criticisms that the body is a lock-step, rubber-stamp for the best interests of the Owners, Oners, and Oiligarchs.
"How can you claim we're all dancing to the same tune, that all our opinions are the same?" they ask, with an innocent shrug.. "Look at Bernie Sanders. John McCain. They're mavericks!"
But this is a species of the now familiar refrain: "With a Black man in the White House, how can you say Murka's still a racist culture?" argument.
Read my lips!
Oil, that is.
Once it's out of the ground, and in the global, commercial stream, there's really no way of knowing who it belongs (or belonged) to. So oil from the tar sands in Alberta, transported down a pipeline across the exact middle of the USofA for refinement and/or transshipment to China or India or Europe is exactly the same as any other oil. It's all part of a huge, sloshing pool of international oil. It is, literally, the lifeblood of the world economy. Without it, everything stops, within about a week.
Why does ANYONE think that there is ANYTHING more important than OIL?
Corollarily, why does ANYONE think ANYONE will do ANYTHING to interrupt the production, dsitribution, and sales of OIL?
The pipeline is a done deal, one way or another.
As is fracking,and deep-water drilling.
NOTHING will stop/prevent the further degradation of the life-world as long as it runs on hydrocarbons.
The whole fucking mammalian life-spher e is in danger, but if it gets in the way of getting more hydro-carbon/petro chemicals, NOBODY gives a shit!
