Hi, Resistance! I think it begins by being smarter consumers of the "news." And by understanding the way the media and the message is used to sell the impossible such as framing the dismantlement of the New Deal as simply another budget-cutting "austerity" measure.

It has been frustrating to see so many of the supposed Progressives sucked into this "fiscal cliff debt crisis discussion." The Catfood Commission was, to me, tantamount to a crazed mugger putting a knife to the throat of us, the Middle Class. The response should be one of fighting back with everything you've got. Or perhaps even negotiating to see if your wallet will suffice in getting the mugger to go on his way so we can live to fight another day. Yet Obama and the Dems and the media and TPM and the DNC and even many here at Dagblog instead got into this game where the negotiation became all about just how deeply we would let the mugger slice away at the muscles and sinews pulsing beneath the blade.

And that was exactly the response that was expected of us by those who have written the script for this drama. What was once sacrosanct and protected as the very foundation that supports the existence of the middle class is now nothing more than policy items to be funded or not. What actually comes out of this "fiscal cliff" negotiation is of no real importance to the larger objective of getting Social Security and all the rest established as a legitimate and sanctioned target for ongoing assaults upon the middle class by the oligarchs who own Washington.

I've never really seen such a wide assortment of otherwise intelligent people act so foolishly as they got on board and took the scripts provided for them in this production. Four years ago, these same people would have said it was impossible to dismantle the New Deal. And now, they're playing it like a chorus in an off-Broadway musical singing in unison about the deal that needs to be struck in support of a proper finish to this cheesy little drama. FEH!

But back to your question, I've actually written a great deal about what it is I think needs to be done instead. From the archives, I would suggest you look here and here, just for starters.

I look forward to the discussion. This is not our brightest moment in the Class War (or, more properly, "Class Assault") that has been visited upon the workers and the middle class and the poor for over thirty years now. I just hope it doesn't actually represent the death throes of those who refused to fight back in defense of our New Deal gains that gave rise to a Middle Class in the first place. We needed combatants. I look around, and all I see are fools.