The Best of Greenwald: Glenn Greenwald writes for Salon.com. He is one of my favorite writers of political analysis. He has written, in my opinion, one of his best pieces entitled “Racial and Ethnic Exploitation of Economic Insecurity.” It is a brilliant analysis of the current toxic political, economic and racist climate that has invaded our country since, I believe, the Civil War. It is an explanation of why Obama and Democrats face such a perilous journey to the November elections which could overturn much of the amazing hope we held in November, 2008. I quote two of the most pertinent paragraphs from this insightful article and then paste the link to its entirety below. I urge you to click on that link or cut and paste it into your browser to read what the article says in full. In the article Greenwald pastes links to other writers you can read among them Matt Taibbi (another one of my favorites) who writes for Rolling Stone Magazine. His article is entitled "Tea Party Rocks Primaries."
Greenwald says in pertinent part: ...
"Rather than emphatically stand up to the bankers and other oligarchical thieves, they coddled and served them, and thus became the face of the elite interests oppressing ordinary Americans rather than their foes. How can an administration represented by Tim Geithner and Larry Summers -- and which specializes in an endless stream of secret deals with corporate lobbyists and sustains itself with Wall Street funding -- possibly maintain any pretense of populist support or changing how Washington works? It can't."
“There are few more bitter ironies than watching the Republican Party -- controlled at its core by the very business interests responsible for the country's vast and growing inequality; responsible for massive transfers of wealth to the richest; and which presided over and enabled the economic collapse -- now become the beneficiaries of middle-class and lower-middle-class economic insecurity. But the Democratic Party's failure/refusal/inability to be anything other than the Party of Tim Geithner -- continuing America's endless, draining Wars while plotting to cut Social Security, one of the few remaining guarantors of a humane standard of living -- renders them unable to offer answers to angry, anxious, resentful Americans. As has happened countless times in countless places, those answers are now being provided instead by a group of self-serving, hateful extremist leaders eager to exploit that anger for their own twisted financial and political ends. And it seems to be working.”
“It is indeed difficult to believe that the country will so quickly return to power the same Republican Party -- in an even more warped and primitive form -- that virtually destroyed the U.S. over the last decade through a mix of extreme corruption, recklessness and lawlessness. But nothing is more foolish than underestimating the dangers that come from this potent mix of economic oppression and the aggressive fanning of racial and ethnic resentments.”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
