from commentor zonk at political animal:
To liberals, it's all about anger at, and jealousy of, the "other".
Keep talking, Al.... Me and the rest of my socialist rabble will just keep sharpening our pitchforks.
I'm not advocating anarchy or the national "reset button" -- mainly because the benefits I receive from our democracy (the freedom to call you, your ilk, and your president morons, etc) are a satisfactory trade-off for working within the system for changes I care about.... but the fact is, "my" benefits are relatively cheap, while the infrastructure that supports you and yours in their quest for wealth and the quest to maintain it are not. Therefore - YOU (you meaning the collective Nordquist set) can pay for it.
It's utterly amazing how the right can scoff at the "jealousy" of the left and babble about "life not being fair", while at the same time failing to realize that the whole system itself isn't carved in some sort of unbreakable stone.
Read your history, my friend.... as much as idiot talking points might like to claim cultural decay as some sort of danger to our American empire, it wasn't cultural decay that sunset the Roman, Spanish, or English empires - it was the concentrating of power, wealth, and use of military force vis a vis "national interests" in the hands of the select few.
I don't care whether we're talking monarchies, theocracies, democracies, or communists states -- once the masses reaching a boiling point and no longer feel vested in the direction of a nation, you've got trouble.
The "American dream" only goes so far in keeping the lower and middle classes in the fold.
You should thank your lucky stars for the "left" -- for our patriotism... John Edwards' populism, Howard Dean's transplant of backbone into liberalism, Clinton's empathetic tone.... whether you hate them and their policies or not - the fact is, they poured their hearts into working within the system.
Imagine if some these liberal idealists - or some skilled leader 10, 20 years from now - decided that the system was no longer possible to save?
The demogoguery on the right, scaring rural farmers about the "death tax", not a single family farm has ever had to be sold to pay an estate tax bill, etc.... that only works for so long. Sooner or later -- when police and fire services become non-existant for all but the most exlusive neighborhoods, when public schools fall into hopeless decay, when higher education becomes financially impossible for all but the affluent, when a war is waged over our business interests thinly disguised as our "national interests" one time too many....
I think you'd find 'active' class warfare quite a bit more distasteful than one waged in the tax code of our democratic society.
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