For those who retain the capacity of understanding the past, fond memories of a society that once had a vibrant middle class, conveys pride and nostalgia.  Today, the harsh reality is that the United States has been transformed into an unyielding authoritarian command and control gulag.  A mere gap between the ruled and the rulers has turned into a gulf of nationwide width.  The internment camp that relocates undesirables has been built large enough to process your friends and family.  Most simply ignore or deny their plight.  They are bent on living an illusion because they are enjoying the ‘good life’.  It’s only the malcontent that risks the wrath of the central planners.  For the vast majority - the system - still has relevance.     

Four year after 911, another calamity brings turmoil to the country.  Katrina might be a natural disaster, but it presented itself as another opportunity to demonstrate the muscle of the central government.  The Parkinson’s disease response from FEMA cannot be blamed solely on bureaucratic incompetence.  No, the nerves themselves suffer from chronic degeneration.  The paralysis that immobilized an organized rescue response has a design fracture.  The real ailment resides in the bone structure.  States’ Rights vs. Federal omniscience is the diagnosis.

The continuous conflict between the Hamiltonian Federalist dominance and the Jeffersonian limited government vision has seldom been more vividly played out in recent years.  Louisiana state government certainly has a long record of corrupt administrations.  Yet, under the stated power sharing structure under the original Federalism model, the Baton Rogue statehouse has the final authority over whether Federal agencies are invited into their jurisdiction.  Since we live in an age of pervasive political propaganda, the average cretin has been infected with a serious case of mental deterioration.  The condition can be described as a national case of Myxedema.  The basal metabolic rate of the communal culture is measured while the public exists in a persistent coma.  Folks have lost the ability to express healthy outrage.

Intellectual arguments that demonstrate the tyrannical nature of the perverted constitutional miscarriage, embodied in DC despotism, fall upon deaf ears.  As long as the personal debt machine keeps expanding the ATM account just grows a little bigger. Dependence upon Federalist benign generosity has become the norm.  Total abandonment of even the pretense of fiscal restraint has Washington engulfed in a sea of endless red ink. The latest addition of Pontchartrain slug passed Congress with the ease of the recent highway bill.  Pork is the meat of choice, since both guns and butter have become sustainable as monetary reality is denied.  Empirical judgment is sacrilege with the suspension of rational behavior.  For the typical American, their compliance to the dictates of a national government is natural, while their identity with state and regional roots fades into obscurity.  So what limits can be expected coming out of the twiddle-dee and twilled-dumb political beltway culture?  Answer, absolutely none!

Common sense has become a rare commodity.  Self-interest is even in less supply.  And all the time, the divide between the privileged and the ordinary widens.  Wealth is no long a sufficient insulator from destructive policies and structural defects.  Hence, the haves and have-nots equation is misleading.  The proper gauge lays between the select few who directly make up the rules, deem them to be legitimate and solely benefit from the manipulation they impose on the rest of us.  The middle is rapidly becoming extinct . . .

Do you really need a litany of all the factors that have gone into the demise of the middle class, or does your state religion ban the memory of financial independence, social identity and an optimistic future?  Just in the event you forget, add up the consequences of the following patterns.  If inflation was dead, what is causing the dramatic rise in expense for necessities – food, energy and clothing?  Tract the cost and increases in insurance, property tax, litigation, health services, prescription drugs and school tuition.  Vehicle prices explode as housing values jump to levels beyond the means of medium incomes.

Add to this circumstance the wholesale export of American jobs for the advancement of the global corporate economy and you end up with a predicament that your meager income is at even more risk.  Then couple the influx from illegal immigrations into the work force and you get even lower pay and prospects of living wage employment. Since macro statistics bore the public, what is the excuse to ignore the micro dire dilemma of your own personal finances?            

The cost of living is only bearable as long as interest rates stay artificially low.  Until now, a dike of monetary arbitrage has held the stock market from an implosion.  The dam that holds back the flood is based upon a scheme of insider protection, fraternal cronyism and pure unadulterated fraud.  Banking has become laughable.  The disparity between interest earned on capital verses the rate paid for borrowing has been at historic highs for years.  The impact clearly means that the middle class is hard pressed to stay afloat.  As a society the bulk of the population is losing significant ground.  Falling behind a curve that never allows for catching up is hazardous.

Representative Bernie Sanders, a rabid collectivist and government redistribution advocate states:

“Since March, 2001, we have lost over 2.7 million jobs in the private sector, including two million decent-paying manufacturing jobs - ten percent of our manufacturing sector. Frighteningly, the hemorrhaging of decent paying jobs is now moving into the white-collar sector. Forrester Research Inc. predicts that at least 3.3 million information technology jobs will be lost to low-wage countries by 2015 with the expansion of digitization, the internet and high-speed data networks.

But understanding the pain and anxiety of the middle class requires going beyond the unemployment numbers. There are tens of millions of fully employed Americans who today earn, in inflation adjusted-dollars, less money than they received 30 years ago. In 1973, private-sector workers in the United States were paid on average $9.08 an hour. Today, in real wages, they are paid $8.33 per hour - more than 8 percent lower. Manufacturing jobs that once paid a living wage are now being done in China, Mexico and other low-wage countries as corporate America ships its plants abroad.”

While a Sanders solution would be a socialistic State imposed debacle, his assessment of the overwhelming assault on the middle class is correct.  When will genuine conservatives face the facts that free enterprise no longer exists in the corporate capitalistic controlled economy? 

Central government partners with prevailing monopolies, this unholy alliance drives the economy for an expressed goal other than profit.  Making money is the means of achieving the ultimate objective.  The ambition is to create a corporotomy prosthesis for society from a top down mock-up.  The technique inserts a penile insert of dominance into personal rear parts of a docile multitude.  The shaft is the reward for their unrequited love.  The middle class suffers a societal rape.

Since 911 the pace for total control advances with every Patriot Act, each foreign adventure and added expansion of the federal government.  During feudal times, the serf paid a much smaller portion of their revenue to the lord.  Debt was unknown to the villein.  Today the plan is to eliminate the few remaining freemen, and to clear the land from undesired slaves.  The legacy of the last four years culminates in the expulsion from the Louisiana bottom land all those urban tenant farmers.  The Trump’s of construction convert the government paid for redevelopment.  Only an omniscient federal despot can make an entire city disappear and eye a crop ripe for the pickings.  The middle class will be stuck with the bill.  The nobility will feast upon the remains of the dead while the severely impaired demand their relief checks and back door fruits party at the Oz bar on Bourbon Street.   

What a disaster!  The federal tempest is far worse than any hurricane, foreign foes or imaginary bogymen.  If the middle class ever gathers together their individual dignity, their focus should be to re-establish the supremacy of local governance.  Meaningful solutions start with local initiative based upon individual inventiveness.  The unmistakable lesson of the last several years is that a dominant federal government is lethal.  This same conclusion has been true for over two centuries, but today the extent and reach of the propaganda, destructive technology and widespread apathy allows the DC monster to trash any community.  For the middle class to save itself urgent action is needed to renounce the heresy that Washington authoritarianism is a government for and by the people. 

America is doomed without national resistance.  Without the middle class the country becomes a universal plantation.  The carpetbaggers from the Potomac are hell bent on federalizing the noble heritage of Confederacy secession.  The rightful basis for self-determination is not a lost cause.  If the middle class refuses to rebel, their progeny will curse their predecessors.  Too many generations have betrayed the principles of the original Republic.  If the middle class continues to accept the overseer’s whip, they deserve the fate of a slave.  ‘A Civilization gone with the wind...“ is a society unwilling to slay the beast that places them in captivity.  In this sacred quest we all need to band together and revolt against a Federal invader eager to raze local authority.