Etc,

The 9/11 tragedy was horrible enough, but then it was used as an excuse to implement all kinds of ruinous foreign policy initiatives.  link
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The unemployed could exercise their clout if they only knew their history.

Snip:

Today, the question is: As the new unemployment "norm" rises, will the "99ers" remain just a number, or will anger and systemic dysfunction lead to the rebirth of movements of the unemployed, perhaps allied, as in the past, with others suffering from the economy's relentless downward arc? Keep in mind that the extent of organized protest by the unemployed in the past should not be exaggerated. Not even the Great Depression evoked their sustained mass mobilization. That's hardly surprising. By its nature, unemployment demoralizes and isolates people. It makes of them a transient and chronically fluctuating population with no readily discernable common enemy and no obvious place to coalesce.

Another question might be: In the coming years, might we see the return of a basic American horror at the phenomenon of joblessness? And might it drive Americans to begin to ask deeper questions about the system that lives and feeds on it?

After all, we now exist in an under-developing economy. What new jobs it is creating are poor paying, low skill, and often temporary, nor are there enough of them to significantly reduce the numbers of those out of work. The 99ers are stark evidence that we may be witnessing the birth of a new permanent class of the marginalized. (The percentage of the unemployed who have been out of work for more than six months has grown from 8.6 percent in 1979 to 19.6 percent today.) Moreover, our mode of "flexible capitalism" has made work itself increasingly transient and precarious.