Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from Global Research.
The author argues that the centralization of political authority in the US has made the issue of the debt ceiling merely political theater designed to gain support for the elimination of all vestiges of the gains made by working people in the 1930s following the 1929 collapse of the economy. Such gains consisted most notably of Social Security, Worker's Compensation, and union organizing rights (the Wagner Act). Contrast this with the current period since the 2008 collapse which has seen mostly the corporate sponsored right-wing Tea Party trying to eliminate those gains of the 1930s (as well as Medicare passed by Lyndon Johnson in 1968 to stifle opposition to the Vietnam War).
Okay, so am I overlooking the labor struggles among State workers in Madison, Wisconsin and other mid-western States? At the moment I am concerned that they are being successfully contained by legal processes and elections which, I believe, will ultimately be very damaging to worker interests. The laws and the electoral machinery were designed by the ruling class to contain and defuse opposition; thus, I see little hope for any positive outcomes by limiting activism to these processes.
A major difference in favor of the current ruling class of capitalists, is that there is no access to mainstream media by militant spokespeople as existed in the 1930s. At that time radio was still quite new, station owners more decentralized, and they had a lot of radio time to fill. Thus, they were much more open to speakers who could command large audiences regardless of their views.
In the 1930s people such as Huey Long and Father Coughlin in their radio broadcasts launched vigorous attacks against the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few which they saw as a major cause of the devastation to the economy and the lives of working people. They were by no means radicals, but they were listened to by many millions of people across the country and likely, along with militant socialist type movements and radical labor unions, forced Franklin Roosevelt to support the progressive laws that he did.
Nowadays, access to mainstream media is carefully controlled to eliminate any militant opposition to elite policies. In fact, the media is carefully crafted to engineer support of these policies and otherwise to entertain, obscure, and divert attention away from the serious issues facing working people. It follows from this argument that it is absolutely essential that working people in the US establish their own means of communication in order to mobilize people to support actions that serve their real interests.
Of course, the author of this article is no radical either. He mainly sees the current concentration of power in the Executive branch as extremely dangerous. Of course, his statement that "The Bush/Cheney regime brought democracy and accountable government to an end." is extremely naive. Democracy has never existed in the US for anyone except for members of the ruling capitalist class. It is just that now the latter are becoming more aggressive and less concerned about preserving appearances.
