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Eagle spent several more hours listening to different groups of Irks, and made extensive notes on his iPad.
He already knew – in broad terms – a great deal about Eagle-Land’s catastrophic economic history since the early Seventies, thanks to Cuckoo and extensive reading; but the Irks were getting into the details. And the details were shocking. And as he went from group to group, they seemed to get worse.
Somehow a small group of extraordinarily greedy people – The Rich and Corporate Interests - had managed to ravage the economic wellbeing and security of several hundred million of their fellow citizens, and almost no one had noticed. Fewer still had protested. Indeed many were under the impression that they had been getting wealthier while their way of life was being actively destroyed.
It said a lot for the soporific power of television, the dangers of having the media as a whole owned by the very class of people who were stealing from you, the corruption of the corporate dominated political system, and the astonishing lack of intellectual curiosity of the average American. Alternatively, they were just dumb. But he truly did not want to believe that.
Yet there hadn’t been any significant political protests about the issues in 40 years, and the core theme that the Right Mugs were determined to destroy the New Deal and the entire Middle Class with it, wasn’t even on the mainstream political agenda. And yet, even such politically sensitive issues as Social Security and military pensions were now on the agenda to be cut – with the Left Mugs conniving in the deed.
In any other country, there would be demonstrators blocking the freeways, burning cars, rioting in the streets; and a tidal wave of civil protest and disobedience. And yet Americans just slumped in front of their big screen TVs, and just took it.
He flew back to his eyrie quite shaken. This wasn’t an Economic War of the Classes, as some had described it. This was an Economic Massacre.
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