I feel the battle's just begun

The MSM has now begun to connect the unemployment situation with the political activism situation. There are a couple of articles here and here which detail the story. Image # 6 really takes a stand on the issue.

Two things strike me about this. The first is the absolute and total incoherence of the logic used to justify their arguments. I have lost my job and I am dependent on unemployment benefits or I am over 65 and receiving social security and medicare and in both cases I have been activated by forces I admittedly don't understand and somehow feel compelled to work to reduce and limit the role of government in people's lives.

This leads to the second point implied in their activism. The activists are portrayed as feeling that their problems are caused by "those people"! Take your pick, immigrants, blacks, city dwellers, welfare recipients, educated elites, government bureaucrats, Presbyterians all are somehow responsible for their problems. And this is why the country needs to be "won back" as if it were somehow lost in a floating crap game. Perhaps it was.

These are people who maybe for the first time in their lives are facing adversity. There has always been a job. There has always been a kindly disposed banker. There has always been a well timed bonus check. There has always been the expectation that tomorrow will be better than today. Until now.

As opposed to "those people" who might have been born in a hole under a well but somehow managed to claw their way out of it only to find themselves at the bottom of yet another hole. Rinse and repeat. I suppose B Rock could be the archetype of this genre only on steroids.

You want to feel anger at the very arrogance of their expectations of success and advancement despite their lack of currently marketable skills in their local market. But what I feel is sympathy for their pain. Maybe they are right.

Maybe it is a zero sum game. Suppose that you cannot have a cohort of people "come up" without having an approximately equal and opposite cohort "come down". Maybe what they feel is real. Maybe people of limited means are destined to be pitted one against the other for all eternity. But to be exploited by the source of your problems (at least partially responsible) to turn against the source of your solutions (at least initially) because "those people" are different, well that's just...

Let's just say we've been here before.