- So you looked in the mirror and you saw you were not
to blame. You looked at the TV screen and saw the faces of the culprits.
You studied the internet, you listened to talk radio shows and heard the
outraged hosts cast blame and name names. You read the newspaper editorials
and you knew, or thought you knew, who and what caused the global crash,
and you knew it might get worse.
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- You knew it wasn't you, who wrecked the world economy.
You knew it was someone without any scruples. You knew, or thought you
knew, that the culprits must have skipped high school Civics class, or
failed Ethics or World Religion in college or plagiarized their class assignments
and cheated on their tests.
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- Mostly you knew YOU were not to blame. How could you
be to blame, with your crummy little job? Besides, you always did your
civic duty and voted in most elections. At least the elections that really
meant something, the national elections and mid-term elections, when you
felt smug and superior for voting for either the smoothest Democrat or
Republican candidate.
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- You knew, in your heart of hearts, that gangsta rap and
violent video games and strip clubs wrecked the world economy. How did
you know this? Because highly paid talk radio hosts and local politicians
and presidential candidates all said they did. You also knew that steroid-abusing,
spoiled, overpaid sports stars wrecked the world economy. How did you know
this? Because highly paid sportswriters and talk show hosts said they did.
When they told you this, on those endless TV sports shows, you nearly tore
up your season tickets in a fit of justified anger.
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- You knew that silicon-breasted models, like Pam Anderson
and her PETA gang, wrecked the world economy. You knew that PETA and Greenpeace
were far worse that the PATRIOT Act, because self-righteous talk radio
hosts told you they were and you believed them.
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- You knew that Conspiracy Theorists wrecked the global
economy. How? Because they eroded faith in public officials. Not that these
public servants weren't beyond scrutiny but by wasting valuable time, discussing
wacky ideas instead of contributing to the economy, these conspiracy theorists
left America vulnerable to the next attack, which they endlessly predicted.
You knew these sick people, sicker than gangsta rappers or spoiled sports
stars, wanted the economy to fail. Why? Because they needed to fulfill
some dark, pessimistic yearning or they had all invested in gold.
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- You looked in the mirror and you knew that religious
nuts wrecked the economy. The ones who wanted to home school their kids.
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- You knew that gun nuts had wrecked the world economy.
Why? Because they mistrusted the government for some reason, and kept mentioning
Oklahoma City or Waco or Ruby Ridge or Randy Weaver, people and places
you had never heard of before.
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- You knew that unions had wrecked the world economy. Why?
Because union workers wanted better paying jobs and health insurance.
These greedy bastards wanted a wage that was only 50-100 times smaller
than the CEOs, instead of 500-1000 times smaller. You knew that all the
jobs in America and Europe went overseas because of union demands and those
greedy union officials, and thus these leeches helped wreck the world economy.
How did you know this? Because highly paid talk radio hosts and wealthy
elected officials said they did.
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- You knew that illegal immigrants wrecked the world economy.
You saw them standing there by the road every day, silently wrecking the
economy in their shabby clothes. You knew that somehow they snuck into
the country, somehow bypassed the airport where the PATRIOT Act was enforced
in full swing, and slowly wrecked the entire world economy with their sly
offer to do all the dirty work. You just knew they were to blame. How?
Because highly paid talk radio hosts and politicians told you they were.
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- You knew that greedy homebuyers were to blame. They wheedled
those honest bankers out of all that hard-earned money, and bought houses
they couldn't afford. For years these scammers had clicked on those flashy
internet links that promised them $500,000 houses for $500 down. Then
they took the money offered by Freddie & Fannie & IndyMac &
Wamu and bought houses they hoped to flip because they watched that reality
show, Flip This or That Old House, and conspired to wreck the world economy.
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- You knew that Libertarians, Anarchists, Independents
and so-called Constitutionalists and all these other third party candidates
had wrecked the world economy. You just knew it! You knew these wacky people
were always the ones calling for increased accountability rather than trust
in the Two Party system. And, thankfully, you knew that you had never
handed them your hard-earned dollars, your sacred vote or heeded their
wacky warnings.
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- These noisy rabble rousers always claimed that the Two
Party system protected the ruling elites, protected bankers and Wall
Street speculators from oversight or scrutiny, protected top intelligence
chiefs and professional politicians and their lobbyists, protected
Pentagon toymakers and corporate dons and ultra-secret societies, protected
them all from too much scrutiny.
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- Of course, Thank God, the highly paid talk radio and
TV hosts and Op-Ed columnists of the US mainstream media always lampooned
these moralistic cretins. They belittled and taunted these nut cases with
their wide-eyed messages that the entire ruling elite was somehow suspect.
But this coalition of troublemakers, including people like Ron Paul, Ralph
Nader, Cynthia McKinney, Dennis Kucinch, Bob Bowman, Uri Avnery, Dahr Jamail,
Naomi Wolf, Wayne Madsen, Steve Lendman, Norman Finkelstein, Devy Kidd,
Robert Fisk, Noam Chomski, Rob Moody, Jeff Rense, Alex Cockburn, Paul Craig
Roberts, Michael Moore, Murray Rothbard, Sherman Skolnick, Jon Gold, Aidan
Monaghan, Alex Jones and thousands of others just like them and their spawn,
swayed enough believers.
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- And pretty soon, wouldn't you know it, the entire world
economy was wrecked.
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- Along with dozens of other fine Internet writers, longtime
gadfly and history buff, Douglas Herman correctly predicted the meltdown
of the US economy with columns like "<http://www.strike-the-root.com/4/herman/herman35.html>Money--Funny,
Scary, Paper Money" (Google), years before Gerald Celente or Nouriel
Roubini. He lives in Bullhead City, Arizona and frequents douglasherman7@yahoo.com
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