My last blog had a wonderful embedded video of Jon Stewart destroying CNBC and its finincal reporting. He also had a go on CNBC on Letterman However, in terms of absolute laughout loud madness, this week’s prize goes to Stephen Colbert: Colbert outguns Beck: Welcome to the ‘Doom Bunker’.
My last blog had a wonderful embedded video of Jon Stewart destroying CNBC and its finincal reporting. He also had a go on CNBC on Letterman However, in terms of absolute laughout loud madness, this week’s prize goes to Stephen Colbert: Colbert outguns Beck: Welcome to the ‘Doom Bunker’.
Man, the American right seems to be going absolutely mental. All over a centrist Democratic who does a nice line in soaring rhetoric…
And it looks like someone is channelling Sarah Palin‘s comment that "Now is not the time to experiment with socialism": Non-sequitur of the day
… comes from Michael Boskin (with a little help from the WSJ editors):
"A financial crisis is the worst time to change the foundations of American capitalism."
During a deep crisis of capitalism, now IS the time to do it, surely? After all, if what you have been doing has resulted in a massive economic crisis any sane person would conclude it was time to try something else. Personally, I would hope that would be libertarian socialism (i.e., anarchism — not to be confused with propertarianism). But that will never come via voting for politicians, only by solidarity and direct action in our workplaces and communities, and anywhere else oppression and hierarchy exist (hopefully building up to an Argentina style revolt or a Spain — to be extremely optimistic for the moment!). And, needless to say, socialism will not (cannot!) be introduced by capitalist politicians, by means of capitalist parties within the capitalist state (or even by socialist parties capturing the republican state).
I guess the confusion on the American right is due to their blinkered knowledge of capitalism as a system rather than as a source of ideological pleasure. Actually existing capitalism, or real capitalism, has always been marked by state intervention — from its birth to now. What the Republicans seem to consider as "socialism" is state intervention which, in some degree, has benefits for the working class.
And talking of "socialism", remember when Palin and McCann made a big thing of Obama’s casual remark that "I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody"? Well, here is a relevant extract from Like, Socialism by Hendrik Hertzberg:
A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that "we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs."
What, "collectively" owning the resources? Sharing in the wealth? Surely that sounds a bit like, well, socialism?
And on a more topical note, another classic Tom Tomorrow cartoon: The GOP’s surefire 11-point plan for success!
There is, I would suggest, a more serious note to all this. In Spain, in the run up to Franco’s coup the conservative newspapers (like ABC) started running murders, and so on extremely prominently (i.e., front page rather than buried in the main paper). The actual level of crime did not rise, but the public’s perception of it rose — and it was framed in a "Spain is going into crisis, we need a strong man to keep us save". And, by strange co-incidence, such a "strong man" appeared…
I cannot help thinking that this current extremely strange explosion of right-wing heads is leading somewhere unpleasant…
Until I blog again, be seeing you!