A bipolar America rejects reason

[PeaceNikki]

A new column by Milwaukee historian John Gurda. Here's a small snip:

I might have missed something here, but I don't recall Obama packaging subprime mortgages for sale to trusting investors, exporting jobs to China or building condos without customers in the Arizona desert. You can blame the president for many things, but blowing up the economy isn't one of them. The fact that Bachmann's simplistic screed has any resonance with voters is not, I fear, a healthy sign for American democracy, nor is the reluctance of her fellow Republicans to distance themselves from her bombast.

And it's not just walking cartoons like Bachmann. The tea party has steered an entire political party hard to the right. We now have the faintly absurd situation of billionaire Warren Buffett saying, "Tax me - please," and Republicans responding, "No, no, that wouldn't be right." The super-rich, long an object of both envy and suspicion in American life, have been re-branded as "essential job-creators." It may be worth noting that, by the end of the 1950s - a decade of robust job creation under Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican - the nation's top tax rate was 91%, compared with just 35% today.

What we're witnessing today, in my opinion, is an epidemic of primal selfishness. When we are responsible to no one but ourselves, when government is considered at best a necessary evil, useful only for defending our shores and paving our highways, the social contract that has always underpinned American society is shredded beyond recognition.

Back in the 1930s, there was a widely shared belief that unbridled capitalism had run the nation's economy into the ground, and there was a deeply felt desire to rein in the private sector. In the early 2000s, we're hearing equally passionate demands to take the bridle off, to gallop back to the good old days of laissez-faire capitalism.

Much more at link: http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/a-bipolar-america-rejects-reason-130886203.html

I love this guy.

[Tumbulu]

1. me too, thanks for posting (nt)

[PeaceNikki]

3. Gurda is a Wisconsin treasure. If you're not familiar with his work,

here are 2 other brilliant pieces I often refer to:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/42448437.html">"Here, Socialism Meant Honest, frugal Government" and http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/89804422.html">"Socialism before it was a four-letter word"

[HowHasItComeToThis]

2. THE TEA PARTY IS A FICTION... PROPAGANDA

THE PROPAGANDISTS ARE HARD AT WORK.... THROWING ANY SHIT THEY THINK OF KNOWING THAT SOMETHING WILL STICK.

THE AMERICAN BRAIN IS BEING ATTACKED BY MADISON AVENUE

[HowHasItComeToThis]

4. GOOD JOB GROVER

[HowHasItComeToThis]

5. THANKS FRANK

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz

[Tennessee Gal]

6. primal selfishness - exactly

[PeaceNikki]

7. I should have snipped that sentence as thread title, huh?

:)

[Major Nikon]

8. Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it

Back in the 1930's, the country learned pretty quickly the effect of unbridled capitalism. The parallels are almost identical. Back then it was relatively easy to get credit to fund speculation in the stock market. The result was a greatly inflated market that was doomed to collapse.

At least back then we were smart enough to learn from our mistakes. Now in the so-called information age we have lost all ability to learn from these things to keep them from repeating.