The Real Top Ten Stories of the Past Decade

[StarfarerBill]

By Robert Freeman

The media are awash with talking heads bloviating about the top stories of the last decade. The wired-in society. The growth of organic food. The new frugality. This is the ritual that reveals their true function in the culture: pacification. It's their way of signaling the masses that Bigger Thinkers are looking after things, so go back to your Wii or Survivor or Facebook reveries.

The amazing thing is how little is ever mentioned about the stories that really mattered, those that affected the very nature of our society, its institutions, and the relation of the people to their state and society.

Those stories paint a picture of danger, of a people who have lost control of their government and the corporations that own it. But you'll hear nary a word about such difficult truths from any storyteller in the conventional media.

So here, in no particular order, are my Top Ten Stories of the Naughties, the ones that really matter.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/01-0

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. -snip-

5.

The fact that 2/3 of all economic growth went to top 1%. John Kennedy's social contract had a rising tide lifting all boats. But over the last decade 2/3 of all economic growth has gone to the top 1% of income earners. Meanwhile the middle class has suffered a $13 trillion writedown in wealth as a result of the housing collapse. The banking bailout and the health care "reform" debate showed as never before the extent to which corporations have captured government and use it to redirect national wealth to themselves and their owners.

[Overseas]

5. This one is widely ignored.

We're still pretending that the country wasn't in a very similar position to the late 1920's when the Bush Depression began by just patching things up rather than reinstating the controls that had prevented financial thievery through reckless trading for decades after the last crash.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. -snip-

6.

The Neo-Feudalization of the American economy. The top 1% of wealth holders own 41% of all the assets in the country while the bottom 40% own absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, workers are saddled with $12 trillion of national debt, an effective indentured servitude that will bind them to their corporate masters for the rest of their lives. This is the working definition of feudalism, where the rich own everything and everybody else has nothing but their proffered labor and their obligations to their masters. The Hapsburgs, the Tudors, and the Bourbons would be jealous.

[Overseas]

6. Privatizing benefits and socializing risks. Opposite FDR.

And then pretending FDR's remedies were not relevant to the Bush Depression by playing creepy "bipartisan" games with our national health security while we tossed billions at Big Finance with very few strings attached.



Details on the topics from one of my favorite DU posters:

Privatizing benefits and socializing risks:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7345610

And on Plutocracy:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7214807

[rurallib]

3. #7 & #9 extrememly important also

7. The surrender of civil liberties. Despite the Fourth Amendment supposedly protecting us against unreasonable searches and seizures, the government can now read your email and listen to your phone calls without any probable cause. The Obama administration has gone to court to prevent the re-institution of Habeas Corpus, suspended during the Bush administration. We are much less free, much less protected from brutalization by our own government than we were just ten years ago

And half of the country begged to give up their rights.
=========================================================================================

9. The collapse of the media. We once imagined it would guard the hen house. Yet that was an anomaly, a freak event around Vietnam and Watergate when it slipped its leash. Since then, sixty independent media outlets have consolidated into five, all retailing the ideology of the powerful, the perpetrators, laundering their lies, covering up the truth, and harassing the truth tellers. In every story mentioned above, the mainstream media have worked to ensure that the people didn't know the truth about the forfeiture of their government, their wealth, their security, and their rights.

This one just can't be emphasized enough. The ultimate marriage of government and corporate power to grease the skids for all the other atrocities.

[Zoeisright]

4. Good God, that is an accurate list.

And it's disheartening and terrifying too.

[Lorien]

7. K & r. nt

[Turbineguy]

8. I think it's unfortunate

they put the last one in there. Also the one about Bush knowing about 9/11. Because the other 8 are really good.

[jotsy]

9. Took a few starts at something similar and knew immediately I was in over my head.

I say the last decade has seen the undoing of a century's civil progress. Dumbya wanted to make his mark on the nation and I fear we will experience discomfort from such visible scarring for some time to come. Most of that list might never have been brought to bear if Bozo the boy king is never allowed to try and rule. Early in 2004, I remember joking about how he'd sooner return us to the monarchy before yielding, it was funny because I was certain he was going to lose. Instead I cried all the way to Thanksgiving that year because the land of the free and the home of the brave unanimously elected to discriminate against the gay community in 11 states.

What I find most compelling is our failure as a public it seems we acknowledge the halls that govern may as well be swarming with prostitutes, yet take no action.

A party engineered recall of a state governor shifted the spread of political power a few years back, and it makes me wonder if we should really have to wait another year for the kind of change we thought we were bringing in '08. Can we the people coordinate a coast to coast recall to let politicians know it's time to earn their spendy keep. (that's $75,000,000.00 collectively)

Where we've been is far from a happy thought, the leaders of the nation I live in bring devastation to countless others in far away lands for reasons we'll never know the deepest truths of. War is terror and we bring it better than any country in the world. To be a citizen governed by a pack of rabid war dogs is to know a shame they leave me no choice but to live with.

It's about where we go from here and how to navigate the turbulent waters of whatever tomorrow holds as we try to remember the things we need to do to think of ourselves as the 'good guys'.

Welcome to the new year; now let's put us back together and see the age old dream of an independent nation through to another generation.