"It is the End of the World As We Know It"

so sang Michael Stipe in far palmier times.

Times like this Humble Elias reflects on the speech Senator Hiram Johnson gave on the defeat of the soldier's bonus bill in the summer of 1932...12,000 starving veterans had the Capitol all but surrounded as congress declined to take any action to ameliorate their situation.
Johnson rose in the US Senate and said the following:

"This marks a new era in the life of our nation… The time may come when this folderol- these trappings of government - will disappear when fat old men like you and me will be lined up against a stone wall."

The waters are rising fast my friends, they will surge over the heads of a lot of proud and vain political and economic hacks...ah but what of the rest of us eh?
The American People are not such fools as imagined by pundits and Rupert Murdoch's spin-doctors. The citizenry are capable of a frightening realism when the times do warrant it.
A frightening realism ruled the election of 1860 and again in 1932 wherein the electorate imposed certain terms on it's leaders and left the details for them to work out.
I think that same frightening realism is about to start driving this election hard.

And for all our sakes I hope for once, that I am not wrong....because as I see it right now, frightening realism is about all we have left.