People feel misled and betrayed...

This is going to be a ongoing and developing meme as the general unraveling of the economic-political system of the last 45 years continues. It's not so much that the entire system will unravel - capitalism is simply too efficient for that - but rather it is the political system that has latched on to the economic system as a parasite, living off of it and now slowly strangling it. Those who can grab the meme and ride it will thrive: those who in the name of progressivism fight to keep the system will fail.

The title of the post comes from this. Key phrase, the only one that really matters:

The past week has been a traumatic one for the Irish electorate. People feel misled and betrayed.

This covers it all.

It is the reason for the dismal Democratic showing in the US as well: the people feel misled and betrayed.

We are seeing the culmination of literally decades of mistakes and errors, of sheer blind bloody-mindedness, all made in the name of "doing good."

Margaret Thatcher put it well when, in a TV interview for Thames TV This Week on Feb. 5, 1976, she said, "...and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They [socialists] always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them."

We have reached that point. The Welfare State is driving everyone into poverty. We have reached the point where there is no money left.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and "Real Existing Socialism" wasn't enough to kill this fundamental point: the basic tenets of socialism - that the great, unwashed masses need to be led to a glorious future where they will get what they deserve - have, implemented incompetently and led by the New Class of classless socialists (see Milovan Đilas and this for more), now led to the collapse of finances world-wide.

The slow, subtle and incremental destruction of wealth via redistribution of income via social spending plans must be manifestly visible by now. Decades of debt accumulation for welfare systems designed by do-gooders meddling with societies en masse are now crushing and increasingly reaching the point of no return.

The people feel misled and betrayed: they were misled by the promises of socialists promising them that they could have a future without work, that they could enjoy the fruits of success without having to work for them; they were betrayed because this is not possible. Repeat: Not Possible.

I've mentioned Kipling here time and time again: The Gods of the Copybook Headings. The poem tells you all of the reasons never, ever to believe someone who calls himself a progressive (which today is the cover-name for socialist, given the utter bankruptcy of socialism). Here are the last two stanzas:

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins: that is exactly what progressives have been championing for the last 45 years. The Gods of the Copybook Headings are nothing more than moral and economic truths of the most basic kind, the ones that stand firmly in the way of utopias of all kinds and fashions, the nemesis of the woolly-thinking, do-gooders of all times, and the shoals upon which all such pipe-dreams shatter and drown.

That is why the people are feeling misled and betrayed. As Abraham Lincoln once said: You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Old Abe had something there. The progressives have educated three generations to believe that they could bring prosperity to all by spending other people's money; the progressives have squandered the wealth of three generations to make it so; the progressives have given the next three generations a burden to bear that will grind them down as none of them has ever deserved; the progressives have betrayed the future and misled the people like almost none before (Communist governments did it better and collapsed just as thoroughly).

Progressives have bankrupted the West. It is time to throw off the shackles of progressive lunacy and turn out the betrayers, sending them into exile and despair for their sins.

The workers (blue and white collar both), the productive elements of society, are now oppressed by the New Class of Djilas, parasites living off their toil.

To paraphrase Marx: Workers Of The World, Unite: You Have Nothing Left To Lose. Government debt has taken everything else.