Racial and ethnic exploitation of economic insecurity - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Glenn Greenwald puts your world in a nutshell:

There are few more bitter ironies than watching the Republican Party -- controlled at its core by the very business interests responsible for the country's vast and growing inequality; responsible for massive transfers of wealth to the richest; and which presided over and enabled the economic collapse -- now become the beneficiaries of middle-class and lower-middle-class economic insecurity. But the Democratic Party's failure/refusal/inability to be anything other than the Party of Tim Geithner -- continuing America's endless, draining Wars while plotting to cut Social Security, one of the few remaining guarantors of a humane standard of living -- renders them unable to offer answers to angry, anxious, resentful Americans. As has happened countless times in countless places, those answers are now being provided instead by a group of self-serving, hateful extremist leaders eager to exploit that anger for their own twisted financial and political ends. And it seems to be working.

It may create a lot of noise, but ultimately I don't think it's "working." Political discourse has become the equivalent of Comic-con. Marketers come loaded for bear and the fan boys go crazy for the latest sci-fi/comic book blockbuster, but when exposed to the larger marketplace, fan-friendly junk like Scott Pilgrim can't live up to the hype.