The government of the United States has shut down. Republicans are outraged. Richard Wolff writes:
Today’s Republican party is built on principle. As a matter of principle, the GOP believes it is the only party that can shut down government as a negotiating tactic. The Democrats’ job is to keep that government open and to cave in to its demands.
When one looks at the history of government shutdowns, there is a delicious irony in all of it:
Ah yes, the irony of it all. It takes a special type of hypocrite to accuse your opponents of hypocrisy for following in your footsteps.
As a matter of principle, it’s Republicans like [Budget Director Mick] Mulvaney who are the deficit hawks, caring deeply about the fiscal rectitude of the federal government. Right up to the point when one of them says the words “tax cuts”, which turn out to be far more important than balancing the budget or the national debt.
Thank goodness we have the Republicans in total control of Washington, after all those years of the Democrats failing to pass a real budget. Now we can watch the Republicans create an even more dysfunctional budget process with continuing resolutions that last just a few weeks at a time.
There is even more irony in the claim that Republicans stand for family values:
As a matter of principle, Republicans are the party closest to God, rallying the faithful at the March for Life rally by anti-abortion activists, who also love to rail against Planned Parenthood. Thank God for the leadership of a conservative president whose lawyer paid tens of thousands of dollars to a porn star, through a shell company and false names.
Before she signed a non-disclosure agreement, the porn star disclosed the sordid details of her affair with the current president soon after his third wife gave birth to his third son.
For Christian conservatives, Donald Trump may be a sinner but he’s really doing God’s work. That’s a whole new definition of family values right there.
Are Americans too stupid to see through the rot?
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As journalist HL Mencken noted many years ago, “No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
Cap
Guaranteeing freedom of choice does not guarantee wise decisions, Cap.
Its a circle and it always comes back in recent history to Germany. The German people were and are the most highly educated thinking people in the world IMHO. So being smart people has little to do with good goverment.
I do sometimes wonder if there is something in the water that Americans drink, Owen.
Supposedly smart people can make really stupid choices, Steve -- irregardless of national borders.
I sometimes wonder if stupidity is a virus, Lorne.
there is no stupidity just self interest packed well
No, Steve. There's plenty of stupidity. And it's different than self interest. Stupidity is self defeating.
There are indeed many stupid Americans wandering about. CBC Radio interviewed some middle class nutcases in Florida, Trump fans who actually think they are being threatened by North Korea, without the first clue about the poltics over the last 65 years. Tax cuts were wonderful, blah blah. A black person was under the impression that some struggle she'd been involved in was well-known world-wide. Like billboard signs announcing "World's biggest" something or other on the road into any two-bit village.
That's Americans' blinkeredness. To them the world is the USA. Nothing important happens or has happened anywhere else ever. So whether other countries disagree with US military strutting is of no moment. All their upside down thinking, from lack of universal healthcare, incarceration of huge swathes of their population for private profit, the "market rules" mantra they swallow whole, their complete lack of empathy for their social inferiors, racist attitude toward anyone with other than white skin when it suits, all of it is the result of severe navel-gazing and lack of interest in what anyone outside the US thinks or does. Puerto Rico and Guam are mere colonies whose natives are treated like dirt; foreign countries with US bases are not allowed to prosecute US servicemen for crimes off-base (Okinawa being the best example). Yessir, white Americans truly think of themselves as special. And once outside the USA, all Americans from all backgrounds act the same way to other people, who conveniently are inferior to any Yank by definition. Brainwashed.
So pleading with them to consider the remainder of the world beyond how it impacts their own cherry lives is an exercise in futility. There were enough of them swanning about with summer homes in NS back in the '60s for it to be obvious that we were second class people compared to them. Democrat or Republican makes no difference, because they're Americans first. They're amused by and dismiss foreigners views of them, but expect those people to pay full attention to America's views about them.
If paradise were one giant strip mall of repeated sameness, supplemented by giant predatory local employment killer internet giants, then the US is it.
Are Americans too stupid to see through the rot? Yes, and they always have been, always believing the fables fed them by their rulers and in general being as dull as a bag of nails, lacking curiosity. A nasty me-first bag of nails. And they have all the money and power, so the rest of us get to grovel"and put up with oafishness.
BM
I have met some wise Americans who see beyond their own backyard, BM. I haven't met Robert Reich; however, he strikes me as a little man with a wide and tolerant view of the world. Unfortunately, people like Reich are not given much quarter down there.
Mencken also wrote. "the people get the government they deserve and they deserve to get it good and hard"
Stupidity is its own curse, zoombats. We keep proving that axiom again and again.
The libertarians who own the party are winning in the battle of product differentiation, as we should expect. If there's not a seat inside this big tent for everybody, there's still enough of them for all the warm white asses we need. Just do as much as you can to keep them in the seats they're assigned and eyes in the audience from wandering over to the other sections. That's not difficult.
But, in the end, it's short sighted, John.
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