The American Lie: 2012 Is A Watershed

Esquire: “There are some truths so hard to face, so ugly and so at odds with how we imagine the world should be, that nobody can accept them. Here’s one: It is obvious that a class system has arrived in America — a recent study of the thirty-four countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that only Italy and Great Britain have less social mobility. But nobody wants to admit: If your daddy was rich, you’re gonna stay rich, and if your daddy was poor, you’re gonna stay poor. Every instinct in the American gut, every institution, every national symbol, runs on the idea that anybody can make it; the only limits are your own limits. Which is an amazing idea, a gift to the world — just no longer true. Culturally, and in their daily lives, Americans continue to glide through a ghostly land of opportunity they can’t bear to tell themselves isn’t real. It’s the most dangerous lie the country tells itself.”

A reader notes:

…we are coming to a turning point in history - capitalism and democracy have coexisted successfully for decades, but now each has outlived its usefulness to the other. Capitalism no longer enriches the masses whom democracy is supposed to empower, and the capitalists live in mortal fear of the moment when the masses start voting their economic interests. Inevitably, one must destroy the other… Capitalism launched a First Strike in 2010 via the Citizens United decision, flooding the airwaves with propaganda, getting Teabagger governors elected in key swing states. And naturally, top of the agenda after the election was a bevy of draconian voter laws to combat an entirely fictional pandemic of “voter fraud”. The real purpose of course was to make voting as arduous and byzantine as possible, restricting the franchise to the privileged few - in other words phony democracy like they have in Russia and elsewhere.

(Source: politicalwire.com)