The Dying American Dream

As the prior post indicated, the human toll of the continuing economic collapse is huge, yet the ruling class among Republicans and their delusional supporters among the Tea Party set and Christian Taliban seem to have no qualms whatsoever over ruined lives. The mentality is almost one of these losers deserve their misfortune. It's yet another example of the huge disconnect between the lip service of those who wrap themselves in religion and purported family values even as they push policies that are devastating real families or opposing the recognition of other families. I simply cannot understand the mindset - which perhaps a good thing, because If I did, it would be an indictment of my own morality. I truly believe that America is on the cusp of a huge decline and it's being fueled in large part by those who most claim to love their country. Bob Herbert has a column in the New York Times that looks at the human devastation that's occur and which seems to mean nothing to the GOP/Tea Party/Christianist crowd. Here are highlights:
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Buried deep beneath the stories about executive bonuses, the stock market surge and the economy’s agonizingly slow road to recovery is the all-but-silent suffering of the many millions of Americans who, economically, are going down for the count.
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The true extent of the economic devastation, and the enormous size of that portion of the population that is being left behind, has not yet been properly acknowledged. What is being allowed to happen to those being pushed out or left out of the American mainstream is the most important and potentially most dangerous issue facing the country.
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“We are the first generation to leave our kids worse off than we were. How did this happen? Why is there such a wide distance between the rich and the middle class and the poor? What happened to the middle class? We did not buy boats or fancy cars or diamonds. Why was it possible to change the economy from one that was based on what we made and grew and serviced to a paper economy that disappeared?”
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One of the things I noticed reading through the letters was the pervasive sense of loss, not just of employment, but of faith in the soundness and possibilities of America. For centuries, Americans have been nothing if not optimistic. But now there is a terrible sense that so much that was taken for granted during the past six or seven decades is being dismantled or destroyed.
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How bad have things become? According to the National Employment Law Project, a trend is growing among employers to not even consider the applications of the unemployed for jobs that become available. Among examples offered by the project were a phone manufacturer that posted a job announcement with the message: “No Unemployed Candidate Will Be Considered At All,” and a Texas electronics company that announced online that it would “not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason.”
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The great promise of the United States, its primary offering to its citizens and the world, is at grave risk. A couple facing foreclosure in Barre, Mass., wrote to Senator Sanders: “We are now at our wits end and in dire straits. Our parents have since left this world and with no place to go, what are we to do and where are we to go?” They pray to God, they said, that they will not end up living in their car in the cold.
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GOP misrule under Chimperator Bush set the stage for this fiasco and now the GOP/Tea Party are hell bent to make it far worse.