The Coming Revolution...

I believe that the story of our generation will be published two or three years from now. It will begin: “The Bush presidency missed an opportunity to influence social change…”
And then it will touch on all of the things that this presidency did wrong in its efforts to mislead the people; not only about the Iraq war but in terms of the social upheaval that was coming that would change everything that we thought we knew and the implications of such wrong-headedness. .

Why do I say this?

Because all of the elements are in place that are pointed in only one direction and either nobody is aware of the overwhelming evidence or choose to ignore the implications, thinking that they will leave it for someone else to address.

The implications of inertia are simply awesome.

What are those implications: Social re-engineering on such a scale that we can’t even imagine what the future holds unless I miss my guess.

Nonsense, you say. Consider the pillars on which a society stands: They are some very basic fundamentals and if they are not satisfied, the society collapses. They begin with food, energy, work, shelter.

What might be the catalyst to augment such fundamental change?

You know the answer to that: Oil.

Right now, we have gone from a norm of $16 a barrel to $40 a barrel to what may become a standard rate of as much as $75 a barrel or more.

At $40 a barrel, we were pushing gasoline at the pumps to $2.00 a gallon. As bad as
$2.00 a gallon is it is history. We will not see gas prices that low for the immediate future. It is likely that within the next several years, gasoline will oscillate between four and five dollars a barrel. This has to do with things like the fact that the middle east can do what it wants with its oil and in the end, OPEC is not really our friend regardless of whether we maintain that illusion and the fact that most companies want to maximize their remaining inventories..

One thing that has kept oil prices relatively moderate is the fact that the oil producers have major investments in the west. That is changing with a redirection of assets. That is also happening in China who instead of buying western debt is investing its resources in tangible assets or investments in diversified companies. In the past, the middle eastern investors did not want to bankrupt their western trading partners; now they have so diversified their investments, that they hardly seem to care.

But the fact of the matter is what we have been led to believe is wrong: That is that the oil producers have an endless supply of oil. That is simply not true. If we put things into perspective, the oil reserves projected at thirty or forty years are really more in the range of twenty years. We knew it and we did nothing to ameliorate or even address the problem. When the reality of the real reserves are understood, there will be increasing pressure for higher prices.

Assuming that is the case, one only has to think of the impact on the very vulnerable middle class. Consider, for example, that instead of allocating twenty dollars to filling up the car, you now have to pay forty dollars for the same privilege.. That means twenty dollars a week has to come from something else to keep the average family on an even keel.

But the impact of oil doesn’t end there, most people use oil as their principal source of fuel and other fuel prices seem to be tied to what happens to oil in one way or another.

Engergy prices for home heating will also be going up. Moreover, anything employing oil or distribution costs will increase. If you buy something derived from petroleum, you will also be paying higher prices. Food will cost more because the distribution costs will increase with the increase in oil prices. Most of the cost for food is tied up in middleman costs—ie transportation, moving the product from the grower or planter or rancher to the grocery store.

At the same time, families in the Middle Class are finding that they are between a rock and a hard place. Their living costs are going up, but their salaries are not.
In fact, many are seeing their jobs taken over by robotic devices or where labor cannot be avoided, shifted to other economic areas—even outside this country—where payrolls are a fraction of what they are here.

Add to this the burden of paying higher rates on mortgages, foreclosures and other pressures resulting from the fact that many took on the kind of mortgages that would increase in time in order to buy into the housing market and now, with all kinds of collateral pressures, the families are unable to make ends meet.

Declining jobs, despite what the statistics may suggest, higher costs for food and energy, are putting the middle class into a bind for which there is no solution.
The fact is that fifty percent of wage earners are maxed out on at least one credit card and that the bulk of all homeowners have maximized the equity available in their homes and you find a potential tinderbox that is very dangerous to the social fabric of this country.

If things keep the way they are going, with the increasing dislocation of the middle class, an illegal minority that serves as a blotter to soak up peripheral or secondary jobs that normally got the middle class through the rough spots, there is no place to go.

The options are few when you find that you cannot afford to heat the house, pay the mortgage, send your kids to school, put food on the table and pay for the medicines your family needs.

If the middle class decides that it has no hope, you can expect change to happen within a shorter time frame. Hope is the determining factor along with its converse, desperation and despair. If the middle class is forced to decide between heating the house and putting food on the table, there will be revolution in this country the likes of which we have never seen before.

As of now, nothing the Congress is doing is designed to address or ameliorate the conditions for the middle class. We don’t see a serious effort to bring drug prices down or address the issues of higher energy costs. The president has ignored the opportunities to address the needs of the American people and, instead, sided on the side of business which will ultimately contribute to a foregone conclusion: Martial law or revolution. Nature abhors a vacuum.

It may not happen this year or next, but unless a way can be found to address the staggering impact of the present fundamentals on the average American taxpayer and bring some relief—and there is no indication that the leadership is even cognizant of the threats posed—this revolution will reshape the relationship between government and the people in ways that will not only stagger the mind, they will rewrite the relationship between the masses and those who govern the masses irrevocably..

At this stage of the game, however, government will not tolerate this happening and position its armies between us and them. The results may prove beyond imagining.

Yet, at this stage of the game, if we had a visionary Chief Executive, who really cared about the people, he could push through legislation that would remove the present escalating demands on the middle class and then push for longer term solutions that would have as its centerpiece alternative energy.

But this won’t happen under Bush&Company.

I have spelled out some of these challenges in my book, A Blueprint for Winning, in which I really believe that we can bring back the America we knew and define a new vision for an America that is visionary and addresses the real time needs of people restoring our country to its former greatness. It is doable. It is possible. But this is the eleventh hour and the hands of time are running down.
If we choose, instead, to pursue the inertia that is characteristic of this administration , the world will change and we will change with it and not for the good.

It is up to us and the government what happens.

Les Aaron