Paul Krugman hit the nail on the head this morning in his op-ed piece in the Times. The Republicans, the ultimate elites, the ultimate Washington insiders, the ultimate enemies of the middle class - are appealing to the nation's anger and resentment by splitting their own character traits off from their group and projecting them onto the Left. Then they attack.
George Orwell said, "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle."
Friends. If we as a people do not wake up from the disease of fantasy and make-believe and address the very real problems that threaten us today, the game is over.
The Right is right about one thing: there is a culture of elites in this country, who truly do have contempt for real Americans' values. They cannot fathom our pain, or our fear that the American Dream is slipping out of our grasp. They think we're a nation of whiners and that, as long as big business is skimming the cream and the people live in a constant state of fear, everything is fine.
Mitt Romney got a great guffaw of derision from the assembled crowd in St. Paul when he mocked Al Gore and suggested the nation could save energy by "keeping Gore's private jet on the ground."
They loved it.
But Gore doesn't own a jet. That didn't matter.
Why? Why can an arena full of people be so easily turned into a political lynch mob by nonsense and lies? Wasn't America supposed to be different?
If we can solve the problem of why it didn't matter, and bring this game of high-stakes make-believe to an end, we might just be okay after all.
Reality hasn't mattered to the Republicans since Ronald Reagan quadrupled the size and expenditure of the federal government behind a mantra that Democrats were for "big government" and "tax-and-spend."
Some very smart people have actually bought into this nonsense, and for many years, too. Even liberals sometimes allow this fiction to stand. And if they can, anyone can.
You can.
The fact that reality didn't matter in 1980, or in St. Paul on Wednesday night, chills me to the bone. And the fact that the feckless mainstream media won't do anything about this disconnect from reality heats me back up with anger.
So at least I achieve a perverse kind of homeostasis.
If real multi-millionaire elites, like Mitt Romney, and real big-city reprobate strike-three divorcees like Rudy Giuliani, who could not care less about the sanctity of his three marriages, can convince us that they are the salt of the Earth, protecting the little guy from value-less, snooty Democrats, we are sunk.
And I mean sunk.
Friday, September 05, 2008
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2 comments:
Hear hear!
I fear that it just might work, but the optimistic side of me notes that Obabama is still up in the race and has maintained the high road.
The press's complete inability to stray from the narrative that it has created for McCain is infuriating. As Krugman points out, he's not a Maverick! Not anymore.
Why do people continue to vote against their economic interests? Why do they care about wedge issues when they can't put gas in the tank? We're sunk all right...
I feel like Brody in Jaws going down with the ship... except the shark is still alive and swimming around the boat, waiting for me to fall in the water. And fall I will!
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