Jimmy Carter’s former National Security Adviser expressed his concern about the possibility of riots on Morning Joe today. To stave them off, he proposes the creation of a voluntary National Solidarity Fund, whose contributors would be those who made out very well in recent times.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: You also talked about the possibility of class conflict.
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I was worrying about it because we’re going to have millions and millions of unemployed, people really facing dire straits. And we’re going to be having that for some period of time before things hopefully improve. And at the same time there is public awareness of this extraordinary wealth that was transferred to a few individuals at levels without historical precedent in America . . . And you sort of say to yourself: what’s going to happen in this society when these people are without jobs, when their families hurt, when they lose their homes, and so forth?
We have the government trying to repair: repair the banking system, to bail the housing out. But what about the rich guys? Where is it? [What are they] doing?
It sort of struck me, that in 1907, when we had a massive banking crisis, when banks were beginning to collapse, there were going to be riots in the streets. Some financiers, led by J.P. Morgan, got together. He locked them in his library at one point. He wouldn’t let them out until 4:45 AM, until they all kicked in and gave some money to stabilize the banks: there was no Federal Reserve at the time.
Where is the monied class today? Why aren’t they doing something: the people who made billions, millions. I’m sort of thinking of Paulson, of Rubin. Why don’t they get together, and why don’t they organize a National Solidarity Fund in which they call on all of those who made these extraordinary amounts of money to kick some back in to [a] National Solidarity Fund?
A bit later, Zbig made his fears explicit.
BRZEZINSKI: And if we don’t get some sort of voluntary National Solidarity Fund, at some point there’ll be such political pressure that Congress will start getting in the act, there’s going to be growing conflict between the classes and if people are unemployed and really hurting, hell, there could be even riots!
Note: This might have been Zbig’s first Morning Joe appearance since he sneeringly dismissed Scarborough as “stunningly superficial.” Unfortunately, from a selfish entertainment-value perspective, there was no renewal of those fireworks, all parties being on their best behavior. Mika, apparently off on vacation, is certainly relieved.
2 Comments
Where does MSNBC find these loons?
Oh, never mind. There is a virtual plethora of these idiots on the left. What’s Krugman’s take on this?
The left will try to cover but this debacle has the Democratic/Obama Stamp and people will slowly come to realize this.
Might be too late. Hopefully not.
I am already hearing talk of Porkulus II, and the ink has yet to dry on the current one.
If the socialists try yet another massive power grab, then Zbigniew just might be seeing riots in the streets.
-Dave
6 Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[...] Brzezinski: ‘Hell, There Could Be Even Riots’ [...]
[...] Brzezinski Sees Riots, Urges Super-Capitalists to Share Wealth 21 02 2009 Brzezinski: ‘Hell, There Could Be Even Riots’ [...]
[...] And not Barney-Frank-on-Meet-the-Press class warfare. Real, blood-in-the-streets riots. full story (No Ratings Yet) Related posts:China fears riots will spread as boom goes sourUK, Europe hit [...]
[...] “Brzezinski: ‘Hell, There Could Be Even Riots’ ” (finkelblog.com) – Feb. 17… [...]
[...] The Afghan/Pakistani quagmire, the focus of this plan, has been made worse by the sheer ignorance, neglect and brutality of the previous American administration. This policy was custom made for driving entire populations into taking-up arms in self-defense, with the only other path to “victory” given serious consideration being the complete decimation of those targeted populations. There is no room at the top for discussions of possible solutions of the impending intersecting world crises that involve moving resources from the accounts of the master class into the hands of the suffering masses. I was recently very surprised to hear one of the master strategists of the empire, adviser to President Obama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, advocating just that in an interview, when he called for creation of a National Solidarity Fund. [...]
[...] It won’t come to that. It won’t come to civil unrest [unlike what Zbig Brzezinski is predicting]. But we do have to change the attitude of the president. To go from being, what I would call a [...]