Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Woman Who Knew Too Much

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

The Woman Who Knew Too Much

Click here to access article by Suzanna Andrews from Vanity Fair.

For me this lengthy piece about Elizabeth Warren's clashes with the Obama administration and the ruling class that all administrations serve, illustrates how this class is losing the support of the middle class.

First, let me make clear what middle class really means in contrast to the way it is deliberately misused in mainstream media who see everyone who are not homeless as middle class. The middle class consists of all the managers, educators, highly trained technicians, and other professionals who keep the capitalist machine going and who have benefited from their services to the machine and the less-than-one percent who own the machine.

Warren was a good little working class girl who eventually grew up to know too much about the ruling class.

Warren decided to investigate the reasons why Americans were ending up in bankruptcy court. “I set out to prove they were all a bunch of cheaters,” she said in a 2007 interview. “I was going to expose these people who were taking advantage of the rest of us.” What she found, after conducting with two colleagues one of the most rigorous bankruptcy studies ever, shook her deeply. The vast majority of those in bankruptcy courts, she discovered, were from hardworking middle-class families, people who lost jobs or had “family breakups” or illnesses that wiped out their savings. “It changed my vision,” she said.

Unlike a growing number of others of her class, she still believes in the system and is planning to run for a US Senate seat from Massachusetts apparently thinking that it can be changed by working within the system. She definitely has more to learn.

Many middle class people have been severely hurt by the recent economic collapse through no fault of their own, and are extremely worried about the future prospects of their children. They see the system functioning in a thoroughly corrupt fashion and only want to restore it to some semblance of fair play. Many do not see the inevitable course that such a self-serving system takes as it strives to satisfy the addictions of a small class of people to power and wealth.

During the past 300 years this criminal class has literally gotten away with murder and mayhem in so many imperial wars, exploitation of workers, and lies to such an extent that they have become both completely corrupt and arrogant. Most middle class people simply don't understand how addiction works: the addict ultimately can never get enough of their drugs. They will brook no opposition and are willing to destroy societies in order to obtain them.