Boomerang Boobs -OR- Say WHAT?!?!?!

I've been saying for decades that I/We now live in an alternate universe. I mark the cross-over date as Jan. 20th, 1980. Not that everything was sunshine and rainbows , or that everything before that made perfect sense, only that RWR's first inaugural marked the point when we turned things upside down. When we decreed that it was better to LOOK good than to FEEL good. When what was said became largely unrelated to what was done. When being armed to the teeth was being peace-loving. When sticking it to the other guy was a virtue. When the only measure of value and worth were what we told it was. When the batshit crazy gemerators were flipped on and cranked up to Eleven!

The shift was anything but subtle. What was said, was 180° from what was done. Through rhetoric and cleverness, using leverage and illusion, major modifications were made to our uniquely American values. It may be shocking to think that prior to that point in time, the stock market reacted to activity and productivity in the domestic MANUFACTURING sector. The market rose and fell based on actual things being produced.
It reflected the markets for actual goods and services.

In 1980 there were vast reservoirs of small, medium and large businesses that were profitable, community building, re-investing economic engines, each sitting on its own sustainable nest-egg and mindful of its cost/benefit ratios. The ethos was to keep it going for the benefit of all. It allowed and supported a stable, manageable class structure with opportunity for all. It sustained by moderating and controlling the potential extremes across the spectrum. And despite the 180° change in definition that occurred, WE owned it. Symbiotically, nobody wanted to have it all. Ownership was concerned with the whole as it allowed them to live a comfortable lifestyle.

What happened?

The model for the economy, post-1980, was the steel industry, the automotive industry and other disinvestment "success" stories. The fuel for Reaganomics was the vast reservoirs of successful businesses. By extending the disastrous disinvestment allowances to the entire economy, it began a mergers and acquisition feeding frenzy. Bite the heads off, suck the juice, throw the skins away. For Fun and PROFIT! It's so easy!

With a seemingly endless supply of profitable businesses to choose from, nobody would miss or notice the slow wildebeest (or herd) that fed the new profit model.
The blood, sweat and toils of successive generations of workers framed as their equity and honored by successive generations of owners vanished in a puff of profit.
The internal organs of our post-WWII society became commodities. To be bartered, bought and sold by and for the highest bidder. As the dominoes began to fall, there were winners and losers. Shrug. That's just the way the mop flops. That's America buddy.

Anyone who looked ahead to where this road would inexorably lead, predicted serious consequences, but were unheard over the celebratory jubilation of "winning". There is a certain unpleasant satisfaction in having your long marginalized warnings begin to be voiced by un-marginalized voices. The problem today is what can be done? We are so far removed from that time and that place. We are so used to being used and accustomed to having our misgivings ignored or worse, redefined to mean something never intended. This is what happens when you weaponize the basest thinking and use it indiscriminately against a defenseless population.

When you empower and mobilize brute squads armed with their own personal demons cultivated by a steady diet of 180°isms. It's we, not they, who are supporting the wrong side. Just look at the Jumbotron scoreboard of the last 50 years!!! The biggest, most succesful lie of this delusion is that somehow, back in the sixties, the DFHs got EVERYTHING THEY WANTED and just look what it hath wrought! That now, having tried it the DFH way, it's time to get back to some good ol' fashioned law and order beatdowns to learn them people their place! Which, if it were TRUE, might even be justified. I'm confident that history will show that power never shifted to the left. Some of the rhetoric perhaps did, but the policy never followed.

Most of the rhetoric is nonsense when applied to the reality, compared to the implementation, held up to the light and considered objectively. Up is down, War is peace. Greed is still good... Most things haven't changed much at all since the Commie Scare, McCarthyism, Civil Rights, House UnAmerican Committee... The only REAL change has been purely rhetorical. The Bozos are still driving the bus...