Hopefully the worst of the violence is over in Great Britain. London's fires are cooling into ashes, and with any luck they won't be rekindled. Â But even though the British economy is still a tinderbox, nothing that's happened has dampened some people's enthusiasm for doing the same thing over here..
The radical right, which is now in full command of the Republican Party, is exploiting the crisis for all its worth. Â And even though the self-described 'sensible center' (which is neither) will condemn the violence, 'centrist' Democrats and media cheerleaders like Tom Friedman will keep pushing the same policies that have brought Great Britain to its knees.
When your ideology demands a 'great bargain' that savages the social safety net, you can't let  experience get in the way.
London's Burning
In the punk years leading up to England's last wave of rioting, "London's Burning" was the name of two different songs. Â The Clash said the city was burning with "boredom," while their lesser-known rivals The Ruts said it was aflame with "anxiety." Â This year's riots were born of both boredom and anxiety, along with lots of despair and rage.
Conservatives still trapped in the sixties argue that the rioters are acting out the rage of the left. Â But the angry crowds are really the mirror of a right-wing, instant gratification, get-rich-quick philosophy that exalts materialism and condemns anyone who can't afford goodies like those flat-screen TVs carried out of burning UK shops. The rioters know they've been thrown away by Britain's elites and they're responding in kind. Â The looters and burners are the flipside of greed, the castaways of consumerism, prosperity's prodigal children.
And they may be coming soon to a location near you.
In their increasingly desperate attempts to prevent the public from seeing the obvious, conservatives blame "multiculturalism" or social liberals. Â Andrew Roberts, for example, writes that "political leaders have constantly failed to ram home the vital message that the something-for-nothing society is as morally wrong as it is financially bankrupt." Â Remarkably, that sentence isn't describing politicians who coddled rich criminals, whose deregulation kindled a wave of Wall Street greed and lawlessness that ruined the economy, and whose 'soft on crime' attitudes have allowed those crimes to go unpunished, as any reasonable reader might conclude. Â Instead, in a piece entitled "Stop Blaming the Wealthy," Roberts is castigating left-leaning politicians -- for allegedly mollycoddling the lower classes.
This attempted distraction is fatally flawed by the fact that Labour, which isn't very left-leaning these days anyway, left power more than a year ago. Â And multiculturalism's been part of the British social fabric for decades. Â So what has changed in the last year? Â Austerity economics came to town. Â
Economic Meltdown
How's that working out? The British economic forecast  has just received its fifth downgrade since the Cameron government took power, and that report came after it was announced that retail sales had fallen 2.5% and household income was projected to fall another 2% under the austerity program.  Last year's gains in employment have already been reversed. The number of people who have been unemployed for more than a year is the highest it's been in more than a decade. Â
Three years after Wall Street precipitated a global crisis, British youth unemployment reached record levels earlier this year. An analyst noted that, "Being out of work for more than a year can have a scarring effect, making it harder to get a job as well as having a negative impact on one's health and wellbeing," adding:Â "The Government's decision to abolish job guarantees for young people may leave a generation of young people scarred for many years to come."
By 2008, Great Britain had reached the highest level of income inequality in more than half a century, and the austerity measures imposed by the new government targeted the victims of that inequality. Â As a recent report showed, the poorest 10% of the population saw their real income fall over the last decade, while "richest tenth of the population have seen much bigger proportional rises in their incomes than any other group."
The riots began in Tottenham, which has the highest unemployment rate in London. Â Youth clubs have been closed, because the austerity economics regime slashed 75% of the youth services budget. Â And, as Seumas Milne points out, young people in the neighborhood said the club closings could lead to rioting, as bored and anxious young people take to the streets. Â
And the austerity crowd has slashed police budgets, too, just as the House Republican budget did here in the United States. Â Even law and order, that shibboleth of conservatism, takes a back seat to the radical austerity ideology. Â That makes it harder for the right and the pseudo-center to justify their discredited policies, leaving them to come up with increasingly shrill and implausible explanations for the violence.
Inflammatory Rhetoric
What do you do when your entire political platform's been discredited? If you're the right, you go on the attack. Â Glenn Beck said that Democrats are "intentionally going for entitlement cuts... to get the American people out on the streets, and I'm telling you now: It will be London, it will be Greece, it is coming. They've sown all the seeds they need to. It's a matter of time." Â
Rush Limbaugh said rioters were "the equivalent of Obama voters."
(The right-wing quotes come courtesy of Media Matters and their hardy band of scouts. Â They go spelunking in the dark caves of the human spirit so we don't have to.)
When the right isn't accusing the left of "cheering the protesters on," it's... well, it's cheering the protesters on. Â This mad mentality is best exemplified by a wild rant from the National Review's John Derbyshire called "Let London Burn." Â Some stalwart grad student could write quite a paper on the undertones and resonances of a paragraph like this one:
"Through British veins runs the poisonous fake idealism of "human rights" and "sensitivity," of happy-clappy multicultural groveling and sick, weak, deracinated moral universalism -- the rotten fruit of a debased, sentimentalized Christianity."
Matt Yglesias makes some telling points, but we'll merely linger on the word deracinate for a moment. Â The word means "to uproot or displace from one's native environment." Derbyshire doesn't share his vision of a non-deracinated moral universalism or an un-debased, unsentimental Christianity, but we'll assume that the Book of Matthew has no place in it.
Derbyshire also waxes nostalgic for the time when England was "a nation" -- words underscored by a link takes you to (I kid you not) a a mezzo-soprano singing "Rule Britannia," as images of the British Empire appear on the screen. Â
His closing words ring like an unsentimental prayer: Let it burn!
The "burn, baby, burn!" school of conservatism is accompanied by the "fire brigade" conservatives who, while not openly cheering the violence in Derbyshire style, grimly warn that patriotic Americans may be building their own barricades soon. Â Sean Hannity speculates that rioting and looting will reach our shores in "maybe ten years," another Fox commentator says "it's going to get nasty here, too."
Are they right? Â Could we be next? Â That's hard to say. Â The United States has experienced riots before, of course. Â Today's economic misery has been most notable for its absence of public activity or protest. Â But every month that passes, and every austerity measure that's passed, sends the same message to the poor, the elderly, the unemployed, the young, and the struggling middle class: You're on your own.
That's a pretty inflammatory message.
Shrinking America
The austerity crowd has dominated the Republican Party for a generation. Now it's captured most of the mainstream media and much of the Democratic leadership too. Â The experience of real people in the real world -- reflected in Great Britain's economic performance over the past year -- hasn't shaken their resolve. Â
Their media shock troops greeted the austerity budget of the current British government with a wave of prose that can best be described as "austerity porn." Â We've already discussed the sado-erotic prose employed by the cut-spending crowd as the Cameron team implemented its economic plan: "Articles about the nation's finances are filled with talk of blood, knives, and amputation," wrote Anne Applebaum. "And the British love it."
Well, they don't seem to love it now.
As Appelbaum deployed her snuff-film imagery, millionaire Tom Friedman scoldingly told the nation that spending to reduce unemployment and stimulate economic growth was a "drug" and that the nation had a "values problem." Â Now, after a year of living by Friedman's "values," Great Britain's economy is in a tailspin and its society is in tatters.
Does that discourage Friedman? Three guesses. Â In his most recent column (written before the riots began but long after the economic results were in), Friedman's still beating the same old drum. Â This time he's excited about the idea that the United States and other developed countries are experiencing, not a Great Recession, but a "Great Contraction." That calls for... gosh, it calls for the same austerity economics Friedman's been preaching for years!
Who'd have guessed? Â Welcome to Tom Friedman's Incredible Shrinking America.
Firestarters
A great contraction is what precedes childbirth, but Friedman as his cohort want the country to give birth to a monster. Â Friedman's preaching the incoherent gospel of a new anti-Jerusalem that would replace Winthrop's "shining city on a hill" with a smoldering slum in a trash-filled ravine. Â Friedman and others of his ilk, in the media and both political parties, are ignoring the economic experience of the last seventy-five years -- and news that's as fresh as today's headlines.
Let's be clear: Â We're not accusing Friedman or anyone else in the US debate of having any responsibility for what's happened in Great Britain. Â Let's leave that sort of mudslinging to the right. Â And while we're at it, let's say what shouldn't need to be said but must be in this age of character assassination: Â To explain violence's economic causes is not to condone it, any more than it condones the crimes of Wall Street to point out that they're caused by deregulation, political corruption, and greed. Â
That image of America as a shining city comes from the Bible:  "A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do [men] light a lamp, and put it under the bushel... let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven."
But the austerity future is a diminished one, a contracted destiny collapsing into itself like a black hole. Â Its only light would come from the burning garbage reflected in the windows of its abandoned buildings. We've seen their future, but the lessons of Britain haven't discouraged them. Â They're still demanding a British-style economy, even while the ashes of London are still warm.
It's incredible, really. As the ruins smolder over there, our most influential people act like children playing with matches. Â They may use different language, but John Derbyshire's words are the ones that best capture the soul of their vision for America:
 Let it burn.
Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow
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Right fights Left while the wolves away with the cattle....
I've been collecting some "good sense" writings of several groups for a while and would like your readers to take a look:
First is Van Jones ( you remember him who Beck/FOX ran out of the WH) who has started a "Build an American Dream project:
http://rebuildthedream.com/
Readers who are progressive, liberal or Democrats. should look at this project and if approved, need to join in, donate, work for and make it go BIG in answer to the TPissers lunatics. At least get their emails and pass along to others. which I have done via Facebook.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/house-dem-chairman-how-about-a-jobs-supercommittee/2011/08/10/gIQApcEB7I_blog.html?wprss=2chambers
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/176383-dem-leader-wants-supercommittee-for-jobs?page=2#comments
This is a good start and great idea from Congressman Larson (D-CONN)
Finally, the labor movement:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/happy-hour-roundup-seiu-launching-major-ad-buy-to-shift-conversation-to-jobs/2011/03/03/gIQA3MoD7I_blog.html
It's sad that while the government leaders are focused on the markets, banks, deficits-debt, "values," and ideology, so many millions are unemployed or under-employed, barely (if so) able to feed their families, much less hope to give their children a better future.
The average middle-working class world-wide have been ignored completely during these past few years, since the "recession" began. Those whose reckless choices-actions precipitated the melt-down & national debts are protected from the consequences of their own doing. The burden of helping them recover (bailouts) was borne by taxpayers, who now are being subjected to austerity measures, while those who created the mess are profitable and enjoy their perks, salaries, benefits and bonuses.
Sadly, many of our leaders are casting blame for this economy on others, rather than implementing policies that would help alleviate the dire conditions of the working families. Blame is being cast on immigrants, the elderly (who expect their prepaid benefits), or the unemployed (being deemed as "lazy") to divert focus from the fact they are not doing their job, serving our nation's interests, but catering only to their own.
It's a matter of time before those gullible souls, who've been believing the ideologies, hypocritical-cynical leaders-representatives begin to realize they've been marginalized in favor of special interests.
Analyze This!
His "we must 'fix' medicare and social security, and deal with the deficit and the debt" while we the People, languish in the middle of what is for many of us no longer a recession, but a full on depression, is exactly the same right wing message the Brits have rammed down the throats of their working classes.
The only difference is that here we have a little thing call the Patriot Act, that Obama has come to love since gaining the presidency. And make no mistake--whether it is Obama, or some Republican, they will not hesitate to unleash it on us if we stand up too long or too loudly.
And Rush and Sean and Fox would cheer!
I'm an Emergacy Service Worker who grew up during the 1960's and remember the TV News Programs of the Watts Riots and thse in Chicago, New Jersey and elsewhere in the USA.
Read the "Kerner Commission Report". Sean Hannity is so far removed from the issue, he
Shouldn't be talking about what going to be a "Tinderbox".
Just look back to the Rodney King Riots in South Central Los Angeles, when the four Police Officer were acquitted.
www.americaspoliticalforum.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYuMPw6Yi3k
. The people in Engalnd feel that they are owed goverment handouts because hey have been dependent on free Goverment handouts and Social help for most of their lives.
They will not work, they actually think that the Goverment is responsible for them not getting their stuff (welfare).
England is becoming a broken down welfare state like greece where; no one works, they get a lifetime of unemployment benifits, They Retire early, and the few that do go to work are getting robbed, beat up and stripped in the street.
I herd an out take stating from the looters/ thugs "We are showing the rich people we can do what we want"
To be sure, there is the same class warfare being pushed by the liberal media in the US. Allot of people in the US feel the resentment agienst "Rich People", Big Corporations. People that work and own business, Couples that make over $250,00.00 a year, Small business owners, job creators.
The thugs in England are products of Socialized goverments people become dependent and look to goverment for their basic needs.
The founders put a Basic right in the Constitution that would prevent such uprisings where Thugs/ flash mobs who would violate the rights of the "American producers, workers, the ones who make us great, the strong, the right, Ones who stand on honor and liberty. People who respect their neighbors, their Families. Americas rich history."
The Rigtht to Bear Arms.
Bankers', coal-oil disasters devastated this country's economy, killed and injured people, ruined local economies, depleted people's savings, property values, etc., yet not one was held accountable. The government protected the corporate miscreants: sharks on Wall St., BP and Massey, forcing the victims-taxpayers to bail them out, put caps-limits on liability, and to not only walk away from the consequences of their decisions-actions, but to resume the same reckless practices.
Many will tell you Social Security and Medicare are welfare, but in fact, we taxpayers prepay for those benefits via involuntary payroll taxes (FICA) throughout our lives. That money is supposed to be set aside and used to fund healthcare and a modest pension for those who've worked for decades and paid into those trust funds.
That is true, it is mandated that Social Security (SS) will be paid first as the Goverment has to pay those debts/Bills/ Obligatins first. Including the MIlitary.
SO why did the President use the Social Security non payment threat?
He wanted hold SS hostiage and scare the payee's. In the prospect of coersing the public into favoring raising Taxes The President boldly lied to Americas face. Most of Americans saw through the Presidents Lies but the Idea he would resourt to using thise threats showes he is no real leader. He just wants the power.
How is it that people think their needs need to be met by something other than themselves? That is one of my points, people become dependent on the Goverment and think thoise things are "owed" to them. People fail to understand that they have to carry their own weight. An entitlement to other peoples money more than the ones who earned it is a Socialist ideology.
Should a student that gets A's take a reduced grade, give it to other students giving them a higher grade? Benifiting from anothers hard work.
The reason no one is held accountible for your mentioned failures you will fing the Liberal democrats have their hand firmly in the middle of those issues..IF you open your eyes and look into it.
In light of these facts, if the poor and the racial minorities who suffer the most during hard economic times start rioting here, the riots are likely to be far more violent and deadly than the riots in England.
this is the way the world ends,
this is the way the world ends.
Not with a bang
but with a whimper.
Ask yourself this. What do you think happens when you add all those troops who come back and find that their government has no time or resources for them to help them find housing, jobs, and healthcare? The government could barely bring itself to come up with a bill to help first responders to 9/11, and even that bill didn't cover the chief reason for 9/11 responders' sickness, cancer.
Will programs to take care of injured vets be cut because nobody will raise taxes to fund them? How long before soldiers who come back and can't find a job, or who can''t work because of mental or physical wounds, become regarded with the sneering contempt a lot of prominent rightwingers have for the poor and unemployed? What do you think those soldiers will do?
Then add in the fact that a vast number a American feel that their government no longer serves their interest.
I pray for America. Unless things change quickly, one way or another bad times are coming.