So the Republicans won in Massachusetts, and health care reform is on life support. I know, the electorate is angry, we have 11% unemployment. So the voters take it out on whoever happens to be in charge. Always happens. But Americans are jumping from the frying pan into the fire. They are replacing the folks who have been trying to solve the country’s problems for less than a year - however imperfectly - by those who caused those problems. They do this because they believe the lies of demagogues like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News:
Lie #1: The Obama administration is to blame for the recession. The President has had barely one year to undo the catastrophe caused by 8 years of Republican mismanagement (more if you go back to Reagan). How can people have such short memory?
Lie #2: The government has spent too much money on things like the stimulus. Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has often explained that the country needs to spend more stimulus money, not less. People are confusing the two recovery programs, blaming the Obama administration for bailing out the fat cats at taxpayer’s expense. But remember that TARP (the Troubled Asset Relief Program) was the Bush-Paulson $700 billion bailout program for investment banks. Obama’s stimulus package was the $787 billion ARRA (American Recovery and Investment Act), aimed at creating jobs and helping people with their mortgages.
The Bush recession was not caused by excessive government spending and meddling, but by precisely the opposite, namely excessive deregulation and corporate tax cuts. The world crisis was caused by Wall Street, not by Uncle Sam, i.e. by private capitalism, not by socialist government.
Lie #3: European-style social democracy doesn’t work as well as American-style capitalism. The only thing required to disprove this are facts. Again, Paul Krugman (for example his syndicated New York Times article on January 12) does this. Another way to find out the truth is to spend a week in Europe. But facts don’t matter to people like Beck, Limbaugh and their followers. Since most Americans have not seen the facts, they believe that Frenchmen are poor, Dutchmen are hungry, and Germans are sick. A few years ago, Rush Limbaugh said that “the American lower class was better off than the European middle class.” A delusional statement, which millions lapped up.
This reminds me of the fantasy world behind the Iron Curtain before the fall of Communism: Eastern Europeans were brainwashed into believing that they lived in a people’s paradise, while life in the West was a nightmare of drugs, crime, filth and poverty. They had no idea, because they didn’t get to see reality. I’m not saying that America is a similar place. But if it continues to deny the reality that social democracy can provide a better life for more people, it is at risk of becoming second rate. But maybe such a realization is too painful. Maybe most Americans prefer to stay in denial.
Lie #4: Our health care system is better than that of 35 other developed countries. We shouldn’t have a single-payer plan, like most of them. Again, just spend a week in Europe, Canada, Japan, or Australia, and experience the superiority of all those countries’ medical systems.
Lie #5: There is too much government. Government is the problem. This mantra was voiced again on January 19 by Christine Todd Whitman, head of the EPA under President Bush: “Let the government just get out of the way, and everything will be fine.”
Lie #6: Government has been growing and growing. Sure, the Federal budget is skyrocketing. These are desperate times. Same thing happened during World War Two - temporarily. Funny how suddenly everyone has become a fiscal conservative. Where were all the fiscal conservatives when President Bush’s budget deficits broke records year after year, due to wars and tax cuts for the rich?
At any rate, at the state and local levels, government is collecting and spending less every year, not more.
Lie #7: Government is inefficient; the private sector is efficient. Proof?
Lie #8: we need less government regulation - of banks, for example. Just read Krugman, again, for example his syndicated New York Times column on January 19.
And finally, the one for which I might get arrested: Lie #9: Taxes are too high.
Imagine that this is 1933. FDR has had less than one year to turn around the country, which is still mired in recession. So you decide to re-elect President Hoover! leave comment here
10 comments:
Yes, Tom. Exactly. Thanks for the taking the time to set the record straight. If only you were on the front page of mainstream media!! And that's probably the biggest culprit of all: the media. If not, then how else do you think these people get so deluded anyway?
The commercial media has been using all of these talking points on a regular basis. It's brainwash, plain and simple. "Media Matters" and "F.A.I.R." -- web sites that anyone can google and read -- has analyzed the right-leaning bias for years. The talk shows invite 2 Republicans for every Democrat, and the Democrat is usually "centrist," meaning right-leaning.
Our democracy has slipped quietly away, overcome of unregulated capitalism. It began with Reagan.
It has corrupted our political process (our Reps are beholden to powerful lobbies and loose campaign rules); our media (the FCC was supposed to protect our constitutional Right To Free Press; what happened?); our food (see "FOOD Inc," or read about past gov't subsidies favoring enormous conglomerates over small farms... Need I go on?
Consolidation continues without enough regulation by government.... monopolies dominate and competition is strangled. And that's how powerful corporations have gotten the upper hand. Judges have confirmed the "rights of personhood" of corporations for over 100 years. TV commercials that are outright lies -- propaganda of the first order -- are permitted because corporations have the right to free speech. So whoever assembles the most money wins.
Citizens are voting against their own interests because they can't get at the truth about candidates. Children grow up to judge a book by its cover, in front of a TV. Brown drove a pick-up truck and Coakley seemed too "cold and distant." So that's what they vote on. Meanwhile, Coakley is a consumer protection lawyer who would have helped them, and Brown, back by the Big Monied Interests, is using them, posing as "one of the guys" who is "rebelling" by using Obama as the scapegoat for the damage Bush left behind.
I'm a product of public school, so I know first-hand that we are strongly brainwashed from kindergarten in this country to believe the myth that we're Number One, a free country, and everyone is equal. That we are the "hope of the world," the "great experiment." You'd think no other democracy ever existed! I questioned it. How can that be, I wondered, if equality really depends, to a large degree, on economic power? (I asked my 6th grade history teacher this question, and she brushed my question off, saying, "We're not studying economics yet, Jan.")
And how can we be "free" if we're not informed? And it's simply not true that we're Number One, except maybe in sheer size and spending by our overblown military, and the numbers of times we've invaded other countries.
I wish these citizens would wake up to the brainwash, but how can I blame them when the cause of our demise is systemic? It's a failure of education, of government, of the Supreme Court (handing Bush the Presidency in 2000), of the consolidation of economic power into the hands of fewer and fewer people while the middle class gets poorer and has less time to research candidates.
Mostly, I blame the media. But how do we reverse things?
Tom
Words cannot describe my enjoyment in watching your growing frustration!
Beste Tom,
(Je moet dit maar even vertalen? Dan hebben Amerikanen er misschien ook wat aan?)
Met veel plezier en interesse lees ik je commentaren.
Het is jammer dat er al zo snel na het aantreden van Obama al zo veel kritiek is.
Niet alles zal zo snel kunnen veranderen en wie denkt dat dat wel kan die moet toch maar even wat langer (!) nadenken.
Ik begrijp ook wel dat de allerarmsten en zwaarst getroffenen vinden dat ze niet snel genoeg aan werk en inkomen en goede sociale zorg worden geholpen.
Hun hoop zal op Obama gevestigd zijn toen zij op hem hebben gestemd.
Dat zij vinden dat Obama te veel bezig is met de buitenlandse politiek zal meer te maken hebben met hun hopeloze toestand, die al heel lang duurt.
Het is treurig dat velen in de VS die ziektekostenverzekering niet moeten. Moeten zij dan eerst zelf failliet gaan na een dure operatie aan hart, hersenen en ingewanden en misschien zelfs alles tegelijk? Moeten zij het dan eerst zelf ervaren? Zijn zij niet eens meer in staat om zich te verplaatsen in de wereld van de ander?
Zou (beter?) onderwijs helpen?
En wie kunnen dan dat onderwijs krijgen. De mensen met (veel) geld...?
Kapitalisme is als een wapen zo gevaarlijk als daar bij niet heel erg goed wordt nagedacht. Maar dat niet alleen: neem menselijk waardigheid in acht en laat elkaar niet verrekken.
We zien hier in Nederland waartoe privatisering kan leiden, niet tot alleen maar verbeteringen.
Kapitalisme toont in veel gevallen niet veel meer dan het gezicht van het recht van de sterkste(n).
Tom, waar verstopte je leugen #9?
Misschien is dat wel de plaats waar we kunnen schrijven wat veel Amerikanen zeggen: 'In Amerika is alles mogelijk', want voor heel veel Amerikanen is dat niet zo: denk aan de snelle wederopbouw van New Orleans, de ziektekostenverzekering en laat men zelf maar verder aanvullen.
Wat staan straks eerder overeind? De nieuwe kantoren op de plek van de Twin Towers of de huizen in New Orleans om maar wat te noemen.
De monnik zei: "We zullen zien.", en ik denk erbij waartoe kapitalisme leiden kan.
Hartelijke groet vanaf de andere kant van de Oceaan.
Peter
The news this week just keeps getting better and better: from Fox News (fair and balanced) Jan 21 “In a stunning reversal of the nation's federal campaign finance laws, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that as an exercise of free speech, corporations, labor unions and other groups can directly spend on political campaigns.” I’m looking forward to commercials from the insurance companies and banks urging the defeat of Jimmy Carter 2.0 in 2012.
I thank anonymous, again, for generating traffic and for making this blog lively. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, there is only one thing worse than to be talked about - it's NOT to be talked about.
But anonymous is also a fool. Unless you are enormously rich, which I doubt, you are shooting yourself in the foot (= pocketbook) with everything you believe in.
What social democracy and "progressives" did for Detroit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hhJ_49leBw&feature=player_embedded
Detroit's devastation has nothing to do with social democracy, although it could be said that it is the result of a LACK of social democracy, depending on how you define it.
Here is a translation of the most salient parts of Peter’s comments - for those Americans who are not fluent in Dutch:
It’s too bad there is so much criticism of Obama so soon after his election. Things cannot change so rapidly. I understand that those who have been hit the hardest find that help isn’t coming fast enough....It is sad that many in the US don’t want health insurance. Must they first go bankrupt because of an expensive heart, brain or bowel operation - maybe all three at once? Must they first experience this themselves? Can’t they empathize with others? And must the super rich be taught this lesson?
Capitalism is a weapon, dangerous if used thoughtlessly. Human dignity must be kept in mind, and people shouldn’t let each other perish.
Your list of lies could include something so many Americans believe: “In America, everything is possible.” For many Americans, that is not true. Think of rebuilding New Orleans, health insurance, the new office buildings to replace the Twin Towers at ground zero - to name just a few...I’m thinking, where Capitalism can lead. Greetings from the other side of the ocean.
Ah, but Detroit (and Michigan) have been governed by incompetent Social Democrats!
I agree with Jan Q's idea that it's the fault of our pathetic media. I have to laugh when i see on CNN or the Washington Post (or wherever) some poll showing that Americans believe something that is demonstrably untrue (among many examples -- death panels). The article then uses such poll results to argue that since Americans believe the untruth, those who profess otherwise are "unpopular".
The fact is that if Americans believe something that's not true, then this is prima facie evidence that the very news source that is touting this poll has abjectly failed to do its duty -- which is to assure that citizens have the information they need to make rational decisions in a democracy.
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