By George Sibley
So America, how’s that tightey- whitey Tea Party workin’ out for ya?
I have to ask – but I’m kind of embarrassed by the question. It just shows I’m infected by the same semi-focused anger and frustration as the rest of the dying American middle class. I’m just coming at it from another angle than the angry, frustrated people whose inept response was the misbegotten Tea Party.
I’m actually as horrified as I’m angered, horrified at how totally aggressive and vicious the assault on the middle class has become – the fact that we are now quite openly taking away from the poor in order to protect the ultra-rich. Never before has the grasping insatiability of those for whom there is never enough been so naked. But even more horrifying is the avid and aggressive participation of so many middle-class people in the undermining of themselves and their future. To see anything comparable, I think we have to go all the way back to the 1930s in Germany, when Hitler was seducing the German bourgeoisie into surrendering their minds to “Make Germany Great Again.” My anger gets evenly split between the exploiters and the exploited, the suckers seduced into doing the dirty work against their fellows – and it is a smoggy unclean anger because I don’t have any idea what to do about it. It is truly as Yeats said: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” I’m as angry at myself as at “them” for my lack of knowing what to do.