Wall Street Journal: Okay, Obama Isn’t Hitler, But He’s Pretty Hitler-y

[TomCADem]

The fact that WSJ seriously attempts to defend Perkins' comparison of President Obama's attacks on income inequality with Adolph Hitler just underscores just how removed from the norm the one percent are.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/01/wsj-obama-isnt-hitler-but-hes-pretty-hitler-y.html

Tom Perkins’s letter to The Wall Street Journal last week, in which he compared liberal attacks on the one percent to the Holocaust, was an anthropologically useful document that displayed the deranged persecution complex that afflicts large segments of America’s superrich in the Obama era. Lest you think Perkins is merely one slightly addled old man, who has slipped into a Howard Hughes–esque cosseted stupor, today the Journal devotes an editorial to defending him.

The Journal concedes that Perkins’s chosen metaphor may have gone a tad too far (“The comparison was unfortunate, yet provocative”). But, the Journal's editors argue, the fact that so many people disagreed with it proves the basic thrust of his argument: “The vituperation is making our friend's point about liberal intolerance — maybe better than he did.” Liberals are mocking wildly rich people who compare their plight to the victims of the Holocaust, and even if this mockery does not currently rise to the level of persecution of the Holocaust itself, really the spirit of the thing is about the same.

The editorial proceeds to defend its thesis by rattling off a list of terrible things that have happened to one percenters in the Obama era. The actual policy agenda that harms the rich — the restoration of Clinton-era tax rates for incomes over $400,000 a year, higher investment taxes to help fund Obamacare, regulation of Wall Street — is curiously absent from the list. Instead the Journal wanders through a farrago of partisan fever dreams.

* * *
The Journal’s editorial underscores that the widespread mockery of Perkins, far from piling on a bewildered plutocrat, actually understates the broader problem. Perkins’s letter provided a peek into the fantasy world of the right-wing one percent, in which fantasies of an incipient Hitler-esque terror are just slightly beyond the norm. The Journal editorial defines persecution of the one percent as the existence of public disagreement. Liberals are mocking Perkins, therefore Perkins is basically right. For Perkins to be wrong — for the rich to enjoy the level of deference the Journal deems appropriate — a billionaire could compare his plight to the victims of the Holocaust and nobody would make fun of him at all.

[struggle4progress]

1. The Journal's has always had a loony tunes editorial policy

[Skittles]

2. that is an EXCELLENT anyalysis

[riqster]

3. Get thee hence to the greatest page.

[Jamaal510]

4. The real Hitler is probably rolling in his grave now

over the horrible job Obama is doing at duplicating his dictatorial status.

[JRLeft]

5. I couldn't agree more.

[yellowcanine]

6. Mocking rich people isn't even intolerance, let alone persecution akin to the holocaust.

It is mocking rich people, who are perfectly capable of defending themselves.

[whistler162]

7. Well they both like dogs........

so I guess you can extrapolate from there!

[Beacool]

8. Nope, he can't be Hitlery.

That name's already been taken by Hillary. That's one of several charming names they use for her on Free Republic and other RW sites.