John Lanchester in The London Review of Books cited by Chris Hedges at Truthdig:
“The cost of daily living, from buying food to getting medical care, will become difficult for all but a few as the dollar plunges. States and cities will see their pension funds drained and finally shut down. The government will be forced to sell off infrastructure, including roads and transport, to private corporations. We will be increasingly charged by privatized utilities—think Enron—for what was once regulated and subsidized. Commercial and private real estate will be worth less than half its current value. The negative equity that already plagues 25 percent of American homes will expand to include nearly all property owners. It will be difficult to borrow and impossible to sell real estate unless we accept massive losses. There will be block after block of empty stores and boarded-up houses. Foreclosures will be epidemic. There will be long lines at soup kitchens and many, many homeless. Our corporate-controlled media, already banal and trivial, will work overtime to anesthetize us with useless gossip, spectacles, sex, gratuitous violence, fear and tawdry junk politics. America will be composed of a large dispossessed underclass and a tiny empowered oligarchy that will run a ruthless and brutal system of neo-feudalism from secure compounds. Those who resist will be silenced, many by force. We will pay a terrible price, and we will pay this price soon, for the gross malfeasance of our power elite.”
Great piece. Indeed, what can illustrate the insanity more than the recent swivet over A congressman yelling “you lie” during El Presidentes speech. People have lost half their home value, half of their savings, lives destroyed, children suffering, two bloody wars with thousands of innocents dying. Still, the media and many people are outraged at this–as if god had been smeared. I cannot imagine a single president in recent memory that could withstand parilaimetary question time (unscripted and hostile) and function as say the typical prime-minster of a parliamentary democracy such as britain or australia–you should see the Italians go at it. But here–its all theatre and we cannot interrupt the might Oz. Odd how when the dems did that to Bush it was not an issue. Partisan hero worship and deification (or is it reification) of poltical offices certainly portends the growth of feudalism and a new dark age. Call me crazy–I feel the darkness encroaching daily.