Sometimes I find it a little bizarre to read the letters to the editor column in my local paper. Actually it isn't really a local paper because it is just part of a large media conglomerate, so the paper covers most of the Hudson Valley area over several counties & only really focuses on high school sports in my area. But for want of a better term, that's what we have.
Since the last presidential election, people keep writing hysterical letters bemoaning the fact that we now live in a totalitarian fascist nation where all freedoms have been taken away. I know that pundits and pseudo analysts sometimes say these things and I assume they are having a little fun, some tit for tat for liberals who branded George Bush as a fascist. Turn the arguments on their heads. Its amazing how you can spin arguments to support a position if all you are doing is engaging in an intellectual exercise, rather than seeking some kind of truth or solution to a problem.
But some people believe this palaver. Some person in the interest of patriotism writes such a letter and you have to admire their bravery, because if this were truly the case, they would be languishing in a political prison as we speak. Imagine the bravery of the newspaper who would risk being shut down for printing such a letter. Sometimes it seems we have such a short memory or maybe we get beat down, hearing mantras day after day, about how all the problems are President Obama's problems now trying to get the public to forget the years of mismanagement, cynicism, divisiveness, cronyism,& neglect. But if you want to believe badly enough anything is possible. I guess people don't get excited about pundits saying we disagree with the current policy line of the U.S. It has to be framed as a colossal battle between good & evil, white hats & black hats. An interesting book that would be good food for thought is Conservatives Without Conscience by John Dean, detailing the sort of makeup of the present day conservative movement.
Your party loses a presidential election, loses control of congress, and suddenly people are calling for constitutional conventions or some sort of rerun of the American Revolution. In a time of crisis for this country,Congressman on the other side of the aisle are basically sitting on their hands, patiently waiting for the next round of elections, hoping they regain control of congress again. I have to say that when dissent happened under the prior administration, they were branded as traitors, maniacs, or fools. The Republican party is positioning itself once again as the party of fiscal sanity, when not too long ago, the country began deficit spending under Bush, even before the 9/11 attacks. You see while I disagree about the mantra you hear often on television, Republicans are doing bad things but Democrats are too, they're all the same!!!, I will say that government spends money regardless of who is in charge, the question is how the money is being spent. Suddenly tax cuts and balancing the budget are once again the simplistic argument that will solve all problems for our country. Nobody enjoys paying taxes, but I don't understand why tax cuts will necessarily do much. A lot of inferences are drawn from tax cuts, that many things will be done as a result of such a proposal, but these things seem very voluntary--- there needs to be incentives, but because common belief is that government is always stupid & business can do no wrong, so it's imperative not do anything to restrain the market & commercial growth.
Now that the Bush tax cuts are expiring people for the wealthy are claiming that this is some sort of class war. Well there are classes in this country. And for some reason class war always seem to be fought uphill.
When the gap grows between the wealthy in this country and everyone else, when this country becomes a less and less egalitarian place, no one is crying class war then. As people's livelihoods are being devalued none of these same pundits seems to feel the outrage. Often people claim that these tax breaks would create so many things but there are no guarantees. The question to be asked is what if jobs are not created, what if that money just goes in the bank, or under a mattress? Probably the answer that would come is "so what, the important people our constituents are covered, the others aren't making donations or voting for us anyway.
Also I think people are downplaying the fact that we are still fighting a war on two fronts-- in pre-Obama times people would be making the claim that such things could be costing American lives, not to mention comments by Michael Steele about failure in Afghanistan. I thought that supporting the troops would continue after the past election.The truth is that a lot of what happened could have been mitigated if government had acted sooner as the economy was imploding on itself, but I guess that was an ideological no-no. And what happens here affects the whole globe. Maybe George Bush's legacy went from throwing his own minions under the bus to throwing the entire world under the bus.
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