AlterNet: Wall Street Meltdown = American Police State?

So the stock market tanked like Sarah Palin yesterday, wiping out a trillion in value and setting the stage for some serious disaster capitalism before Bush leaves office in January. That is, if he leaves office. If you think that he and Cheney are going to go gently into that good night, even if Congress gives them a $700 billion parachute, read my latest article for AlterNet first. You just might change your mind.

Will Wall Street’s Meltdown Turn America Into a Police State?
[Scott Thill, AlterNet.org]
“Raw capitalism is dead.” — Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary

“Can’t we just all go out and say things are OK?” — President Bush, to congressional leaders during bailout negotiations

I’m not much of an Army Times reader, but after reading that a brigade was shipping from Iraq in October to serve as “an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks” in the homeland right before the election, my antennae perked up. Same as they did when I read that an electoral college doomsday scenario exists in which Dick Cheney casts the deciding vote that gives McCain-Palin the White House.

That is, if Cheney and Bush don’t take it for themselves. That may sound like fantasy, but don’t kill the messenger. They are all strands of the Gordian knot the Bush administration has tied around the neck of the American people for the last two presidential terms, best represented today by the failed bailout of banks, brokers and other complicit parties that have since jacked the American people out of trillions. And while the Army Times revelation or election doomsday may turn out to be paranoia rather than prescience, the evidence just isn’t there.

Like I said: antennae.

They’ve come in handy as bullshit detectors since Bush stole the election from a flat-footed Al Gore and set about engineering the greatest transfer of public wealth into private hands in American history. If you factor in Monday’s failed takeover, as well as the $5 trillion the American people now owe thanks to the “bailout” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, not to mention the continuing hyper-expensive occupation of Iraq and so on, our citizenry is now so far in the hole that it’s pointless griping about numbers. If you want one, use the figure put forth by Dennis Kucinich: half a quadrillion dollars. We have evolved past the point of economic or geopolitical reality and entered a phase of pure concept.

And all vectors of that phase point toward the conclusion that the proverbial shit has totally hit the fan — head on, and all over again. MORE @ ALTERNET