The Rising Undercurrent of Popular Discontent in America

I have noticed something recently, both around the "water cooler" at work and creeping into the public discourse.

I keep hearing the same sentiment expressed in conversations between ordinary Americans: "things in this country are only going to continue getting worse until we have an armed insurrection."

And it isn't just progressives and liberals. I have heard some conservatives say the same thing.
Everyone is thinking the same thing; Are we headed toward another civil war?

A woman recently asked Michael Moore about this on Hardball.

"UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, Michael, my name is Becka Baker. I‘m from Tulsa, Oklahoma. My question for you is with 71 percent of the American people dissatisfied with this country today, dissatisfied with the war, health care, education, that the sky is blue, you name it, they‘re dissatisfied. Do you think America is ripe for a revolt? Will a revolution put this nation back on track?"

Also recently, Hugo Award winning Author Orson Scott Card wrote "Empire", a fiction about a near-future revolution in the United States between liberals and conservatives.

This thought is on every one's mind, because there are no practical solutions being offered. The corporate control of our government seems total and immovable without violent overthrow. The conservative world-view that government cannot do anything right and that only private, for-profit enterprises can do anything for America infects our media and therefore infects a great many Americans, to the detriment of all Americans. We are being polarized into classes again and the media is keeping everyone ignorant to that fact.

That is what John Edwards is talking about when he talks about "Two Americas". My brother delivered a truckload of relief supplies to the Gulf Coast after Katrina and afterwards he told me that "those people needed those supplied desperately... before Katrina had ever hit."

There is a new book, "Richistan", that talks about how the wealthy live in a completely isolated world of their own. They send their kids to private schools and use private hospitals. Executives have private parking spaces and private entrances in most of the largest corporations. They live in gated communities and use personal assistants to do their shopping.

The corporate media keeps telling us that the economy is doing great, but their only evidence for that is that corporate profits have been going up.
At the same time, for average workers, real wages have been falling and our benefits have been drying up right before our eyes. We are watching our neighbors and families going bankrupt and losing their homes because of medical costs, outsourcing of jobs or because they were patriotic enough to go over and serve in Iraq.

Protests have not worked.
Writing letters has not worked.
Calling our Representatives has not worked.
They just caved-in AGAIN and gave into Bush on his warrentless wiretapping.

And the rightwing is thinking about it too. They are waiting and watching for the straw that breaks the camels back.

After Supreme Court Justice Roberts collapsed this week, rightwing radio host Michael "Savage" Wiener claimed that it was because of a "conspiracy by Democrats".

This country is headed straight for another civil war.

The signs are right under all our noses.

A Democratic victory in 2008 will only prolong the inevitable unless something radical happens and a real progressive populist is not elected. That will only happen if enough concerned Americans get together and take back the Democratic party.

A Republican victory in 2008 will only guarantee that the next American civil war happens sooner rather than later.