Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Axis Of Evil

David Frum types it like it is:
The background to so much of the politics of the past four years is the mood of apocalyptic terror that has gripped so much of the American upper class.

Hucksters of all kinds have battened on this terror. They tell them that free enterprise is under attack; that Obama is a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, an anti-colonialist. Only by donating to my think tank, buying my book, watching my network, going to my movie, can you - can we - stop him before he seizes everything to give to his base of "bums," as Charles Murray memorably called them.

And what makes it all both so heart-rending and so outrageous is that all this is occurring at a time when economically disadvantaged Americans have never been so demoralized and passive, never exerted less political clout. No Coxey's army is marching on Washington, no sit-down strikes are paralyzing factories, no squatters are moving onto farmer's fields. Occupy Wall Street immediately fizzled, there is no protest party of the political left.

The only radical mass movement in this country is the Tea Party, a movement to defend the interests of elderly incumbent beneficiaries of the existing welfare state. Against that movement is a government of liberal technocrats dependent on campaign donations from a different faction of the American super-rich than that which backs Mitt Romney himself.

From the greatest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, the rights and perquisites of wealth have emerged undiminished - and the central issue in this election is whether those rights and perquisites shall be enhanced still more, or whether they should be allowed to slip back to the level that prevailed during the dot.com boom.

Yet even so, the rich and the old are scared witless! Watch the trailer of Dinesh D'Souza's new movie to glimpse into their mental universe: chanting swarthy mobs, churches and banks under attack, angry black people grabbing at other people's houses.

It's all a scam, but it's a spectacularly effective scam. Mitt Romney tried to make use of the scam, and now instead has fallen victim to it himself.
Christ, what assholes.

3 comments:

Smut Clyde said...

Hucksters of all kinds have battened on this terror.

Umm, is this the same David Frum who still boasts proudly of encouraging the mood of terror and exploiting it as an excuse to invade Iraq? I heard him on the wireless set the other day expressing his main regret about the Bush years, i.e. the way they allowed themselves to be side-tracked into focusing on Al Qaeda and invading Afghanistan.

The only radical mass movement in this country is the Tea Party, a movement to defend the interests of elderly incumbent beneficiaries of the existing welfare state.

An astroturfed minority -- mobilised to defend millionaires from taxation -- is suddenly all about 'elderly incumbent beneficiaries' clinging to their entitlements? The OWS movement airbrushed out of existence?

Christ what an asshole.

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

The OWS movement airbrushed out of existence?

It was Department of Homeland Securityed out of existence, by big city mayors like Rahmbo Emanuel.
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M. Bouffant said...

Nobody's Perfect Editor:
We endorse nothing from Frum/ilk but what is quoted, mostly. Just impressed when any of them admit what ninnies the rest are.

(Of course, it also has to do w/ neo-con & econo-con/Randian differences in the party. Frum's greatest concern w/ the American people is what sort of cannon fodder they'll make.)

Did look up the Tea Party's popularity (It has none.) but this is not an obsessive "fisking" operation here, & we like to let the reader find something to complain about.

Those hippies were brushed somewhere. Weren't they about to start occupying again or something?