A good thing about this crisis is superb rants that occasionally appear.
Alex Steffan, honcho at WorldChanging:
There is a great cluelessness afoot in this land.
It’s padding around in Europe and Asia as well, but here in the U.S., it’s staggering around with giant clomping feet, and its favorite stomping grounds are the economic punditry centers of Wall Street and Silicon Valley.
For most Americans, anger about the economy — indeed, sheer blind lynch-the-bastards rage — is not irrational at all. The American future has just been looted by a small class of thug investors. The average American makes less now than he or she would have in 1973, and probably works longer hours for worse benefits. That, on top of a grinding away of all manner of public goods — things regular people depend on, like schools and libraries and childcare, not to mention a functioning climate — has left the average American in a profoundly tenuous condition: and it was all done for the profit of a tiny percentage of the wealthiest people in this country.
Describing that reality is not class warfare, it’s history. In this situation, anger is a completely rational response.