cursed clutches of the croesus contaminants! The day this book rolled-up, Bernie Sanders had been dealt some massive down-turn in his contest against Joe “Meat-Flipper” Biden. Just weeks before, Sanders had been surging forth as the front-runner on a seemingly indefatigable conduit whilst Biden was receding & stagnating. Then, some abrupt political vicissitude somehow transpired? & the candidates almost seemed to exchange places?…
i have yet to hear an adequate explanation, but the whole shit-sham is ‘rat-fucked’ beyond reparation short of a revolutionary arse-wallop, so whatever Amerikkka. Joe Biden? Are you fucking yanking the dogs outgrowths? Joe fuckin’ Biden??? seriously? Not even Elizabeth Warren, but Joe Biden??? fucking Joe Biden? Not even the gay veteran guy, but Joe funking Biden? Have you learned nothing? & Hunter Biden’s appalling corrupt actions in Ukraine? Yes! – Trump is infinitely more corrupt, excremental, criminal & debased, but the Bidens are atrocious & exactly what gifted succour to Turd-Tard’s legion of liars. Have you idiots not learned anything? Perhaps that is the whole idea? A false deck.
Well, Bernie Sanders is one of the fifty or so contributing writers to this largely excellent composite from veteran journalist collective/entity In These Times. Others include heavyweights such as Arundhati Roy, Slavoj Zizek, Naomi Klein & Noam Chomsky among many others.
America’s ingenuity in inequality is legendary, revoltingly powerful & unsurpassed by any other developed country, a title that it has been able to boast of for many decades & one that only gets larger & more potent no matter which party occupies power (although always accelerating most markedly under Republican misrule). It is an obscenity, instantly excluding America from the “civilized” stratum that it so loves to brag & flap, but in reality is one of the bitterest & most poisonous of charades. The conditions & the extremities foisted onto the majority of its citizens – contrasted with the insane, fevered sycophancy regaled on the all powerful, all prioritized corporate-consecration are unique in the world. it is a white-collar-criminal-utopia that demonstrates statistics & levels in poverty, incarceration rates, food-health & safety-environmental legislation, of such staggering direness & magnitude or even total absence & indifference as the safety measures have been entirely extirpated under the urgings of non-elected entities. No safety net, & no fucks given, – an industrialized exploitation & predation corporatocracy going for maximum extraction & minimum responsibility & accountability, if any at all.
“the United States of Amnesia” as it is sometimes called, as all these monumental destructions of living conditions, basic fairness & due process have very’ very deliberately been beaten to death with official writs, diabolical deregulations & do-aways under a succession of suited mega criminals that should be on death row for crimes against their own populace & the planet at large.
The consortium gathered here have been paying close attention to this swirling reservoir of injustice, corruption & political-criminality, preserving the moments & decisions (public & private) that have spawned this massive misshapen deformity.
The Glass Steagall Act, Mandatory Minimums, the industrial prison complex, the hysterically malevolent American Legislation and Exchange Council, the demonic Koch Industries, Citizens United, the decimation of labor laws & Unions, the subprime crisis & the 2008 bailout & the house of horrors history with all its subsequent rape & wreckage.
The book is stuffed with obscenities, & indignant, shocked & appalled specialists inveighing, mourning, decrying this total & utter evil & madness.
One particularly telling segment is as follows, courtesy of wage & hour investigator Bobby Myers –
“Our powers were just really weak. We were constantly bluffing. Some repeat offenders eventually learned to call our bluff, and then there was very little we could do. That was when the claimant would see just how powerless we were to enforce the wage law – ”
by design.
A real shit-kicker of a book which is worth it for Beau Hodai’s section on the malefic ALEC alone.
Fuck everybody that did not opt for Sanders! – your ignorance is blotting out our escape exit.
In These Times, 2017, Verso, 233 pages