The economic collapse

The great good fortune is that these events have taken place before not after the US presidential election: had this happened in March 2009, and had Obama won a tight contest he would have been powerless for a disjointed four years. Now, instead, not only is he more likely to win (if only because, in the welter of real news the Republicans have been unable to mount their usual campaign of concerted character assassination, and so have lost vital weeks of pre-election Attwater activity) but he is also more likely to be able to govern. Expect a great shift in our language towards equality and fairness: socialism may not be back yet, but social justice is.