Rebel: to take unconventional action to oppose a political arrangement.
Rebel against what: the remarkable class polarization that has been killing the New Deal since 1980.
Sense of history: The half of the population, which is disproportionately non-white, at the bottom almost certainly does. Probably a third of the top half would do so, too.
R: have you studied how the power elite deals with rebellion in the 20th century?
Rebellion is opposed and repressed. After the rise of TV, the elite's ability to shoot protesters down evaporated. Are you trying to say nobody could rebel because they'd get killed? That's poppycock.
R: this is preposterous: people aren't muddling through. some aren't making
it at all.
We're talking politics here, R, not morality. Of course, low-intensity depression kills individuals. But those people personalize their troubles, and are numerically insignificant compared with the vast millions who could and should be politicized over falling wages, no job security, lack of health insurance, the puniness and tax-unfairness of Social Security, union-busting, and political capitalism/corruption.
R: >Until then, the economy will not be allowed to collapse, just as the
S&Ls
>weren't.
R: according to whom? explain who has the power to keep the economy from collapsing should that be its direction.
The elite. They would respond to a housing bubble-burst with bailouts of some kind. Foreign debt could be called in, but who among the creditors is willing to torpedo their best customer?
R: >Our rulers know they wouldn't emerge from another Great
>Depression.
R: how do you know they know this?
Do _you_ think they could last through another decade of 25 percent unemployment? I don't. Their power is no a mile wide, but only an inch deep. People wouldn't sit around listening to "free market" stuff like they did in the 1930s. And the elites wouldn't risk that non-response. Their response would not be progressive -- it'd probably be more wars -- but it won't risk provoking mass rebellion.