Time for an American Spring

Stopped clocks are right twice a day, and Al Gore can be too, assuming you use a generous definition of "day" and "twice"... and "right".


Long after the media had shamefacedly retired the "Arab Spring" in the same closet where they keep the Mondale presidency and Grateful Dead memorabilia-- Al Gore brought it out with impeccable timing on an episode of "Where on TV is Keith Olbermann".

We need to have an American Spring,” Gore said. “You know, the Arab Spring—the nonviolent part of it isn’t finished yet—but we need to have an American Spring, a kind of an American Tahrir Square.

And this time no CBS reporters will have to be sexually assaulted. But the Goracle of Montecito, like a stopped clock, got the time wrong. The American Spring was in 2010. It was in the roar of Tea Party crowds gathering for popular protests around the nation. And the role of Mubarak was played his distant cousin, Barry.

You can always tell the revolutionaries from the tyrants by seeing which group issues bulletins about the dangers of extremism, and which tells the government to go to hell. Last year a lot of people told the government to go to hell... and that worries the government.

Janet Napolitano wasn't issuing bulletins about the dangers of right wing extremists for her health, but because her boss and his cronies are terrified that an electoral revolution might shake them off and their legions of parasites as completely as a dog in a flea bath. Best to make the alternative seem as scary and dangerous as possible, before Janet, Barry and Joe are out of office and working as lobbyists for some company that wants to send pesticides into space.

Gore's proposal for yet another grass roots movement echoes phony pro-government forces in Egypt. Sure the Coffee Party wasn't riding camels into Tahrir Square, while waving swords around, but that's only because you can't do all that while sipping a latte. The intention was the same. Shut down popular protests before the peasants start getting too many ideas about their station. And it hasn't worked yet.

The Goracle's grass roots movement, like the Coffee Party, has no purpose except to pressure Obama to go further left. That's like forming a grass roots movement to convince Bush to wear more cowboy hats. It only exists to endorse the authorities, while pretending to be revolutionary. An uprising of cats dressed up as mice. "Workers and Peasants of Capitol Hill Unite, You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Government Jobs."

When Obama picked up an economic crisis and carried it into the Great Depression end zone, doing his touchdown dance to celebrate killing more jobs than every human resources department in the country combined, the American Spring was inevitable. And it came.

The media has played the same role in America that it did in Egypt, touting the pro-regime line and warning about the dangers of crazy mobs hopped up on guns, bibles and racism who want to overthrow the benevolent government of Hussein I, Prince of Chicago, Earl of Oahu, Duke of Nairobi and Great Steward of Jakarta.

And the public has listened to them bleat with one ear, while storming the barricades with the other. They'll listen to CNN reports on how John Boehner is just an oompa-loompa who cries all the time and isn't as cool and happening as Barack Hussein Obama and Lady Gaga, but unlike CNN reporters and Washington D.C. officials-- they need jobs.


The towers of debt rising out of D.C., the high taxes and elephantine regulations, were bearable as long as the economy was functional. A pin doesn't hurt that much when you've got extra pounds, but when you're down to the bone, it's a whole other story. And America is getting down to the bone.

The irony of the welfare state is that it is most bearable when the economy has enough padding to soften the blow. But when the jobs aren't there, then subsidizing a massive bureaucracy and their masters who go globe trotting every time the local arugula gets too stale, is the straw that breaks the American born camel's back.

The Goracle would like to organize a grass roots movement of people who are outraged over taxes not being high enough. The problem is that most of people who would show up to such a thing either have government jobs or other taxpayer subsidized alternative lifestyles.

"Give us more money" is a viable grass roots movement in Egypt, but in the United States, it usually sounds more like, "Give us back our money" or at least, "Stop taking so much of our money."

MSNBC can sneeze up a storm over the Koch brothers, but there's a reason that the Gadsen flag is the image of the Tea Party. It's not a flag that comfortable people who are satisfied with the way things are let fly. It's an angry flag for fed up people who feel stepped on, put upon and rode over.

The media refuses to consider why that might be, for the same reason that Marie Antoinette wondered why the peasants couldn't just eat cake and the Goracle doesn't understand why those mobs don't join a new grass roots movements to buy him a few more mansions through Cap and Trade. The oppressors rarely understand or care about the feelings of the oppressed. They rarely even want to consider that the oppressed might genuinely be oppressed.

Cue the spectacle of blowdried talking heads who rarely within a mile of a black person, unless it's in a gentrified part of Harlem, crying racism. A convenient way to end all conversations in their circle, but much less effective in a country where white people are eating Spam, while a black man sits in the highest office putting on a spectacle of conspicuous consumption to rival Louis XIV.

Of course black unemployment is even higher than white unemployment. About the only black leader still enthusiastic about Obama is Al Sharpton and all he got out of it was an MSNBC gig. When Jesse Jackson muttered something about slicing off Obama's legumes, it was because like most black leaders he anticipated a candidate who would take the black vote even more for granted than usual with dread.

Most of the country has soured on Obama. About the only thing the government media, the political non-profits and the grass roots organizations have been doing is voter suppression. The omnipresence of Obama is fading. He still shows up on magazine covers and his wife plods her way in her latest dyed trash bag to some random TV show to promote healthy eating or frightening small children, but their hearts aren't in it.


Camelot II died this time of overexposure. The Obamas had their fifteen minutes and then their fifteen hours, fifteen days and finally fifteen months. And the public has tuned them out as decisively as a banner ad on the internet. Now it's up to their adorable toy media poodles to yap about the dangers of the Tea Party and cutting the amount of money we give to terrorists.

But the American Spring is still coming, in autumn. The country has a rendezvous with history and this time it won't be distracted by shiny teleprompters or Greek pillars. Americans are generous to a fault. They will give you the shirt off their backs-- which is exactly what they gave Obama. Now they want the shirt back and a decent enough income to afford a new one.

Obama got four years to fix the economy. In an interview he suggested that he was entitled to eight. And eight is just another number from here to infinity. Like the Arab dictators who felt entitled to rule for as long as the hummus was good and the bribes even better-- Hussein I is due for a wake up call.

Forget the Arab Spring-- the American Autumn is coming in 2012.