Revolution

The inevitability of revolution is stalking the U.S. This revolution won't be the result of any political movement or ideology, but will instead be the fruit of converging economic catastrophes now gathering strength like a tsunami. It will follow economic events the same way the wheels of an oxcart follow the animals who pull it.

This is a society living on borrowed time and borrowed money, and the notes are about to fall due. As often happens, they appear to be falling due all at the same time.

Read the morning news and you can follow the trajectory of steadily rising oil prices, which dipped a bit in May before resuming their relentless climb. The age of cheap oil is over, and the result will be inflation, because increases in the price of fuel cause the cost of everything people buy to rise also. This energy crisis isn't coming; it's already here.

Just as serious is the level of personal and governmental indebtedness this country and its people have contracted. With the recent change in bankruptcy law, borrowers who have been making 30K a year and living on 50 are soon going to find themselves squarely behind an economic eight ball for life, stuck with the same level of income they were unable to live on previously, with heavy paybacks piled on top of the day-to-day burden of living. Equally critical is the looming change in the interest-only fixed-rate mortgage loans home buyers have been taking out from Ditech. Huge numbers of these are about to metamorphose into variable-rate, interest-plus-principal paybacks, and those foolish and prodigal borrowers will be swamped. Unfortunately for them, bankruptcy is no longer an option.

When people find themselves whipsawed and sandwiched by rising costs and diminished resources, or to put it bluntly, poorer than they used to be, they will no longer remain the docile herd you see now. They'll be looking to fix responsiblity, and looking for revenge.

The first revolution changed the way we do government. The next one will change the way we do business.

The authors of the Constitution wanted above all else to prevent the accumulation of too much power in too few hands. That's the sole aim of the system of checks and balances they incorporated into the founding document.

Understandably, they were unable to foresee the rise of corporate power, and the subversion of government by the oligarchy of big money, which is exactly what has happened. The United States today is not a democracy, but a plutocracy which needs to be reined in, scattered, dispersed, checked and balanced.

Thomas Jefferson, writing on revolution, observed that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

Must be, and inevitably will be, I'd say.