The mask ripped off

So of course austerity is ordinary people stolen from to pay for the wild partys thrown by bankers and speculators.  Of course it is.  I know that and since you are reading a politics blog you  probably know that too.

But for everyday people who don't follow the news and whose lips curl at politics talk much less economics, who have been fed on an endless diet of lies about what we can afford and why and contempt for the poor as if they were the ones stealing from them - to them austerity has been sold as a correction to costly indulgences we can no longer afford, for them austerity doesn't currently feel like theft.

As if decades of giveaways to big business and the super-wealthy and the deliberate hollowing out of revenues had never happened.

Then Cyprus.

"It’s as if the Europeans are holding up a neon sign, written in Greek and Italian, saying “time to stage a run on your banks!”" 
- Paul Krugman
 
The elite are now openly and sanctimoneously planning to pay for the disaster they caused by directly looting the bank accounts of ordinary people.

First they came for welfare and I said nothing because I wasn't on welfare.  Then they came for education and I said nothing because l wasn't a student. Then they came for healthcare and I said nothing because l wasn't sick.

Then they came for my bank account.  By then it was too late.

Wake up!