Twilight of the God-Forsaken

Popular Resistance

Economic "Recovery?"

The average annual unemployment rates in 36 states plus D.C. in 2015 were higher than the average unemployment rate for those states in 2007. (WSJ)

America Acquired in a Hostile Takover:

Economic indicators may be up but they don’t reflect the economic insecurity most Americans still feel, nor the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness they experience.

Nor do the major indicators show the linkages Americans see between wealth and power, crony capitalism, declining real wages, soaring CEO pay, and a billionaire class that’s turning our democracy into an oligarchy.

Median family income lower now than it was sixteen years ago, adjusted for inflation.

Most economic gains, meanwhile, have gone to top.

These gains have translated into political power to rig the system with bank bailouts, corporate subsidies, special tax loopholes, trade deals, and increasing market power – all of which have further pushed down wages pulled up profits. (The End of the Establishment?)

Revolt Against the Elites

Donald Trump's recent screeds against hedge fund managers have seemed to invoke his inner Bernie Sanders.

...the hoary distinction between the left and the right needs to be updated.

Marine Le Pen [...] vows to replace the "neo-liberal" French establishment with an aggressively interventionist state. Nationalization of banks is on the agenda of far-right governments in Hungary and Poland, along with more predictable anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies.

It's now clear that the bonanza of globalization has been divided grossly unequally. Whatever the reasons for this -- technological innovation or financial liberalization -- a small number of networked people have grown disproportionately rich in many democracies.

Consequently, anger, distrust and hostility reign in the broader public sphere against the Davos Men and their apparent accomplices in politics and media.

[...] a widening gap between elite and mass perceptions in the U.S., the U.K., France, India and Australia.

And liberals, such as Hilary Clinton in America or New Labour in Britain, appear too complicit with globalized elites. (Revolt against the Posh Boys)

Left v.Right Us v. Them 

Perhaps it's time now to stop mapping political differences along the left-right dichotomy.

The great political, intellectual and emotional chasm of our world runs between transnational elites with access to diverse forms of social, economic and cultural power, and masses who feel left out from the global party and who express their fury and resentment through social media and xenophobic movements.

We have entered a perilous new era in politics, where a whirlwind of raw emotions is blowing away all the verities of the past. (Revolt against the Posh Boys)

Global elites, cultural vandals and wrecking-ball governments have already blown away "the verities of the past." We're looking to blow away the cultural ghetto and indentured servitude they slapped together upon the ruins.

Related: Don't Blame Americans for Blaming China