You bet your life it could! The same rage, rioting and violence, death and destruction as in London, Madrid, Athens? Absolutely! And here's why.
First, came the dissolution of the compact between major employers and their employees that existed for much of my life. You really had to screw up to loose your job with AT&T, and hundreds of similar companies, unless you were drinking or stealing. A work life with one employer was a common thing. After 25 years you got your watch and retired with honor and many friends. If, for some reason, you were fired, it was serious stuff. No more. That's all as old fashioned as a Model T Ford.
As anyone in business today can tell you, the first step an executive in a new position takes is to prepare his/her resume, because there is such huge turnover in the work place. A top notch young executive can easily expect to have 10 or more jobs before retirement, partially because employees are just numbers today, so great is the emphasis on profit. Further, you can be fired Christmas Eve and no one thinks twice about it, because it's not personal, it's just the way the game is played. As a matter of fact, it's so impersonal that when the hammer falls, even a CEO is brusquely escorted out of the building by Security, just like anyone else. Imagine it, if you've never had the experience.
Then came huge disillusionment and disappointment with the Church. People have been brutalized by weeping evangelists, mega church TV preachers and pedophile priests. As the Roman Catholic priest and writer, Andrew Greeley has said, "We've done everything possible to drive them away and still they come." To many it seemed the fall of the Church was the last straw, but that's the straw that is being destroyed now, namely our compact with the government, our government which we have served in uniform and trusted in faithfully.
Young Eric Cantor, the Republican Majority Whip who so wants to be Speaker of the House,and 3rd in line to be president, tells anyone who will listen that we (the Republicans) have to tell the people (that's us) that the government (our government) promised things to us that we (the USA) can't afford it. According to Eric, that's things like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid at anything like current levels, but, of course, we CAN afford tax cuts for the rich and every conceivable form of corporate welfare. This is no longer a mere threat, IT"S HAPPENING NOW!
Recently elected Republican governors are leading their states to weaken unions, to destroy collective bargaining and to return to the old ways of the Robber Barons a century ago. I read recently of county employees in a small town in Rhode Island who had simply been told that their retirement was henceforth going to be $1,000 a month and they should consider themselves lucky. People will fight that kind of high handed outrage with everything they've got, as they always have. If the US had gone into default as a result of the Republicans' refusal to raise the debt ceiling and elderly people had been denied their monthly checks, there WOULD have been riots right here in America. That's more betrayal and disillusionment than any people can take, even those as orderly as we are.
But there's more. Americans who for years were entreated to "own your share of America" through investing in the stock market, have had the rudest possible awakening. As they learned that there are rapacious wolves on Wall Street, in addition to the bulls and bears, they were also discovering that another part of the American dream was also elusive, namely, owning one's own home, complete with white picket fence. Fuggedaboutit! It will be years before small investors venture back into the market for either stocks or houses. They aren't just terrified, they're furious. A local Florida legislator said recently, "The people don't hate us. They despise us." And she's right. The public now knows for sure that elected officials and people running for office cannot be trusted to be consistent. They run right or left whole seeking office and then as election day nears, they become centrists. Once in office, they forget let's say, their committment to just 2 terms, or some other pledge they never meant to honor. They lie whenever they wish, assuming people won't remember or that they can somehow excuse their action. And they lie about the most important functions of their offices. George W. Bush, and I regret deeply having to say it, should go down in infamy for lying about the reasons for which he led America into the Iraq war. He, VP Dick Cheney and Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld whould be held accountable for the debasing the very fabric of our democracy by condoning torture and renditions. They took away our innocense.
In addition, as I've said and written before, people feel they've also been ripped off by inflated oil and other prices which go up for any reason (and drive many other staples) but seldom come down. When they finally come to understand just how this has been allowed to happen there is going to be major trouble. And that's what's next, in the coming years - a very close look at the changes that need to be made in capitalism itself.
Did I mention that all this is on top of the enormous changes that we need to make in the way our government operates? The Republicans have made this startlingly clear in their historic opposition to President Obama. As Americans come to realize that Republicans are willing to sacrifice the interests of the nation to the interests of the Republican party, because they cannot abide the idea of a competent black man in the White House, all hell is going to break loose. Frankly, I think the GOP would welcome violence between now and Nov. 12, 2012, if they could recapture the presidency. That's how far we've descended from where we've been in just a few scant years of organized greed. This is only the beginning, too. Yes, really bad stuff can happen here in this "sweet land of liberty... Let rocks their silence break."
