A fool and his umbrella are soon parted
As published in OpEdNews, Feb. 23, 2011.
Muammar Gaddafi has just appeared on TV, Muammar the Magnificent, Muammar the Mad. His rant will probably see more of his allies flee. Watch for this TV series to be canceled without notice.
My own fantasy is that dictators appear on state television in circumstances like this to gauge the impact of their words on the people.
If protest swells after their appearance, they leave. If protests quiet down, they stay. Remember how Mubarak said he was going to stay until death – and then left?
Ghaddafi is having to admit the delusional nature of his belief that he is the hope of Africa and the world. He is having to confront the fact that people just plain don’t like him and want him … well, dead.
The departure of Ghaddafi from the global stage will be a big blow to the tin-pot dictators of the world. When I say that, of course, I have my eye on Myanmar, but also the really bad dudes in Africa and the corrupt regimes of lesser shades in places like the Philippines and Indonesia.
Make no mistake about it. Our work as the cabal’s opponents is not done until all of them have been kicked out. But then it looks like that will happen sooner than I personally might ever have suspected.
Meanwhile, in the States, it appears that a number of Republican states have been planning to attack workers’ bargaining rights. I look at that and scratch my head. I could not think of a better issue to polarize people and cast the conservatives in a worse light than attacking bargaining rights.
Let’s say that a member of the elite, rich and powerful, has an imaginary, psychic stature of seven feet and an ordinary worker has a psychic stature of, let’s say, a few inches. With collective bargaining rights, the psychic imprint of the worker grows to seven feet as well. It’s just that the worker’s stature is a collective construction whereas the elite’s footprint is individual.
United, workers have a chance to bargain for their wellbeing. Individually, they have no chance and are at the mercy of the elite, which is undoubtedly why the elite wants to end collective bargaining.
So I cannot think of one issue that is better guaranteed to organize opposition than attacking collective-bargaining rights. If I was to go down on my knees and beg the elite to choose an issue that maximally empowered the people, it would be this one. Please, please attack our collective-bargaining rights. Please, please.
Don’t increase surveillance. Don’t install more body scanners. Don’t create more pandemics or HAARP us with extreme weather. Don’t deny us medicare. Don’t cancel food stamps or school lunches or extend foreclosures.
No, please, attack the institution of collective bargaining.
Big, big quagmire for the cabal. They have walked into a major leghold trap. They have stepped into the Labrea Tar Pit of issues.
Watch for workers across America, who submitted quietly to the ravages of automation, watched their jobs shipped overseas without complaint, saw one social program after another be dropped, one entitlement after another be chiseled away, and their entire economic position in society be reduced and reduced, now draw the line and say: “This far and no further.”
And watch for the dinosaur elite to just keep stumbling on, trying to force the issue, feeling safe in their ownership of governors’ mansions and legislatures.
In my view, this is definitely the issue that will unite Americans. This is one of the few issues that has the power to do so.
Elite of America, we can always depend on you in the last analysis to be dumb, stupid, foolish. We can always count on you to be unable to compromise, bend, back away. In the last analysis, you have no real sense of what is good for you. You will stumble, like Mubarak and Ghaddafi have. You will fall. And you will leave.
And now you just may have given us the issue which draws us all together and allows us to do that – to shove you out the door once and for all.
