The Future of an Illusion
Jon Chait has a great new piece on the historical sources, hidden motivations, and overall incoherence of the contemporary GOP’s anti-tax dogma.
One implicit feature of Chait’s analysis is that it throws light on the extent to which “the Left” in America now means something like “people who think massive increases in wealth inequality are actually undesirable.”
Thanks for the link to an excellent analysis. My main disagreement with Chait has to do with his semi-optimistic conclusion:
The problem is that the enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend. “The Left” in the US today isn’t even people who question massive increases in wealth; as Chait points out, it’s people who question the Randroid dogma that taxes are always wrong. And the dominant group among such people are old-fashioned fiscal conservatives like the folks that the President tapped to head his Catfood Commission.
Or to put this another way, the scope of the mainstream debate over economic policies in America today is narrower–and further to the right–than the scope of the debate within the GOP in 1980.
Well put.
Sad, but true.
When Brad DeLong is “the Left” rather than the long-extinct category “sane conservative” we are in trouble.
When you’re so far left that you think Brad DeLong isn’t the left, you’re in bigger trouble.
We don’t need you to define what counts as left.
Yeah. Words have no meaning to some people. The guy above me, for instance…
I know. Why, it was just last week when DeLong advocated liquidating the rentiers as a class.
malaclypse: hilarious!
but for the record, bruce bartlett is a sane conservative.
brad delong is a sane centrist.
Adding insult to injury, in California, because of oppressive state environmental laws, the rioting mobs are forced to use hybrid tumbrels, and even those are on scheduled-phase-out, due to be replaced by hydrogen-powered models.
Les aristos à la LED-equipped lanterne
If “the Left” is everyone who doesn’t agree that getting fucked to death by the hyper-rich is acceptable, then that means there’s about 35% of the country that wants this outcome.
Or, put another way, around one-third of us are completely fucking insane.
This seems to match up with results from polls over the last couple years – no matter how bizarro-right-wing the opinion, about 20-25% of people seem to agree with it (Obama the Antichrist? SURE!). Historically, this was regarded as a certain unavoidable fraction of people just flat-out messing with the pollsters; now I’m not so sure.
Mind you, I’d estimate the fraction at closer to about 25% on this issue, as there’s the 1% who actually benefit from Republican policies and the 10% that think they COULD be part of that 1% in the future…
I think the 25% ARE the people who think they’re going to become part of the 1%. By the Dunning-Kruger effect they think they’re geniuses who are going to get their big break any day now.
The Crazification Factor strikes again!
Team spirit. In a country where people get buried in Packers caskets, tens of millions of people are not surprisingly content to sit in the stands, and cheer for Team Red, even at the cost of their own unemployment, loss of insurance, risk of homelessness, etc, so long as their side is winning.
To understand American politics you have to sell your copy of The Federalist Papers to an unsuspecting AP US Government student, and invest the proceeds in a big foam ‘We’re #1!’ finger.
A great article, many thanks for linking to it!
Here’s my simple (overly?) definition of Repbulcians:
People who do everything they can to cut taxes for themselves, their families and their cronies, and to cut government spending on anything that doesn’t benefit themselves, their families, and their cronies.
My opinion on the same topic. Bonus points for me for being ahead of the curve, chronologically speaking.
Yeah, and you’re soooooo right:
“Fuck you!” is pretty much all that these cowardly bullies stand for.
Ask them why, and the default answer, minus the talking points, is ‘Because, fuck you!’ Or, ‘Fuck you, because!’
they’re going to keep doing it as long as they keep winning, which is why, for example, i’ve given $100 to the effort to recall the 9 wisconsin state senators.
I did a $15 a month auto-deduct to Act Blue’s dedicated Wisconsin fund.
But, you know, we should totally continue this ‘lesser of two evils’ nonsense that brought us to this point. It has been so completely and utterly effective.
soullite, i always remember the quote from john mitchell that appeared in time magazine in the immediate aftermath of the mayday anti-vietnam action in 1971 in washington d.c. looking down upon the gathered lefties (the ones who had concluded, in that era, that this lesser of two evils business had lost its utility), mitchell opined “this country is going to go so far to the right you won’t recognize it.”
conceivably the most perspicacious moment of the era.
which is to say, no, the lesser of two evils approach sure hasn’t worked out well, but the alternative worked out even worse. you gotta reason to think it would be different this time?
Well put.
The challenge is understanding that lesser-evilism is a necessary short-run tactic, while not settling for it as a medium-to-long-run strategy.
And this challenge is increased by two factors: 1) the lesser evils themselves work overtime to convince liberals that voting or them is the only viable long-run strategy; 2) the better medium-to-long-run strategy will be difficult to devise and will involve a lot of heavy lifting (though the movement starting in Wisconsin may provides important seeds for creating this strategy).
Exactly. In the absence of a viable third alternative, we really have little recourse in the short term. In the longer term we need to try to create a viable alternative, but the institutional obstacles to establishing a viable third party (or recapturing the Democratic Party) remain formidable.
Where Chait is wrong is believing there is a Left that implicitly has a message. If “the Left” has one, and let’s assume it’s along the lines of Campos’s inequality is wrong, that message is not getting through to enough people to make a difference especially in an off year election like 2010.
If there is a message, who’s carrying it? Msnbc, the Fauxsnews of the left? There are no newspapers carrying it. No cable channels, except maybe Comedy Central for an hour. Few politicians outside of a Bernie Sanders or maybe Anthony Weiner.
How is it that after 30 years of very effective conservative propaganda, there is no equivalent message on the “Left”? And not likely to be one, either.
Regulatory capture abetted by media capture augmented by effective propaganda built partly around what Chait argues and partly built around fear and loathing has overcome any message the “Left” has crafted.
tom, the right’s program is simple, easy to repeat, and easy to unify around: anti-taxes, anti-regulation, anti the use of government to fulfill the preamble of the constitution, pro-militarism.
the only significant differences between the right today and goldwater/reagan in the early ’60s is a greater strain of authoritarianism.
since the left is constantly reinventing itself, inherently suspicious of success, and appears to be unable to think long term, that consistency hasn’t been (and probably isn’t in) the cards.
and, of course, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that part of what the right has won is a set of victories that institutionally weakens the left, leading up to the victory that pretty much has sealed the deal: the corporate cash onslaught opened up by the roberts court.
Please show me a billionaire who can actually profit by funding a left-wing message.
SATSQ
I know he’s not exactly a man of the true left, but I read his book (The Big Con) and Charles Pierce’s book on morons in America back-to-back and they really clarify the issues the country faces, especially with regard to electing the next Zaphod Beeblebrox and all
I’m not sure I would support his comments about supply side economics and taxation’s effects on employment. As far as I know, these are accepted ideas among economists; they just don’t think that they apply to us. Yes, fewer people will work if taxation rates are %90 and welfare is generous. No, the same is not true for %30 rates. The laffer curve is both correct and applied in a completely idiotic and incorrect fashion.