Rehearsals for a Civil War

[AllentownJake]

By James Howard Kunstler
on February 22, 2010 7:06 AM

Amid the general incoherence of the Tea Party rebels and the failure of progressives to recognize the structural changes underway in a peak oil world, lies a deadly swamp of paradox where all parties may drown in the quicksand of their own muddled intentions.
The Tea Party appeals to the swelling numbers of the new former middle class angry at the sudden vanishing of their accustomed perqs and entitlements to a predictably comfortable suburban existence. They're mad at the government and hot for "liberty." But how do they propose to maintain the hyper-complexities of suburban life without taxes to pay for fixing the countless roads their lives depend on or to run the gold-plated central school districts that seem to exist solely to provide Friday night football? As for liberty, a handful of despotic corporations from McDonalds to WalMart have been granted the liberty to destroy the Tea-bagger's bodies and the economic fabric of their communities -- and they seem to want more of that kind of liberty, based on the recent decision of a "conservative" majority on the Supreme Court allowing corporations to buy elections. The Tea-baggers also apparently crave the liberty to push other people around, especially on questions of abortion and religion. That's an interesting kind of freedom.
As more and more of them lose jobs and incomes, will they resent their government-issued extended unemployment benefits? I doubt that you'll see them burning their own checks in big public demonstrations the way the Vietnam War protesters burned their draft cards. And of course this also goes for the retiree Tea-baggers who show up at their Tea Parties to inveigh against the government -- except the agency that prints their social security checks, or the other one that pays for their liver transplants (while 40-million unretired, un-insured Americans under sixty-five get slammed with extortionary hospital bills for twenty-thousand dollar routine appendectomies that end up bankrupting them).

http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/02/rehearsals-for-a-civil-war.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+clusterfucknation+%28Clusterfuck+Nation%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

[gordianot]

1. What happens when the sheep think they are wolves. A case of sheep in wolves clothing.

Also known as tea-baggers.

[AllentownJake]

2. This was one of the best summaries I have read

because the second part is the Wall Street Democrats.

[Blue_Tires]

3. ttt

[damntexdem]

4. It may be that there are preparations for war -- but it won't be civil.

[AllentownJake]

5. Interesting take

People who are being sustained by the government are angry about the government spending money, and the people who are supposed to be working on "change" are doing all they can to prop up the broken system.