The Four Great Hypocrisies of the Debt Deal

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“We have, in this deal, declared that we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all political incumbents are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Re-nomination, re-election, and the pursuit of hypocrisy.

“We have superceded Congress to facilitate 750 billion dollars in domestic cuts including Medicare in order to end an artificially-induced political hostage crisis over debt, originating from the bills run up by a Republican president who funneled billions of taxpayer dollars to the military-industrial complex by unfunded, unnecessary, and unproductive wars, enabled in doing so by the very same Republican leaders who now cry for balanced budgets – and we have called it compromise.

“Where is the outrage to come from? From you!

“It will do no good to wait for the politicians to suddenly atone for their sins, they are too busy trying to keep their jobs to do their jobs. It will do no good to wait for the media to remember its origins as the free press, the watchdog of democracy envisioned by Jefferson, they are too busy trying to get exclusive details about how exactly the bank robbers emptied the public’s pockets to give a damn about telling anybody what they looked like or which way they went. It will do no good to wait for the apolitical public to get a clue, they can’t hear the clue over all the scandal and chatter and diversion and illusion.

“The betrayal of what this nation was supposed to be about did not begin with this deal and it surely will not end with this deal. There is a tide pushing back the rights of each of us and it has been artificially induced by union bashing and the sowing of hatreds and fears and now this evermore institutionalized economic battering of the average American. It will continue and it will crush us because those that created it are organized, and unified, and hell-bent. And the only response is to be organized, and unified and hell-bent in return.

“We must find again the energy and the purpose of the 1960s and the 1970s, and we must protest this deal and all the goddamn deals to come in the streets. We must rise, nonviolently, but insistently. General strikes, boycotts, protests, sit-ins, non-cooperation, takeovers. But modern versions of that resistance, facilitated and amplified by a weapon our predecessors did not have: the glory that is instantaneous communication.

“First you’ve got to get mad! I cannot say to you meet here at this hour or that one, and we’ll peacefully break that back of government that exist merely to get its functionaries re-elected. But I can say that the time is coming for the window for us to restore the control of our government to ourselves will close, and we had damn well better act before then because this deal is more than a tipping point from where the government goes from defending the safety net to gutting it. This is wrong!”