Obviously, my political sympathies find me vastly favoring Democrats over Republicans. It’s not that I find the former sainted and the latter demonic. In general, the Democrats’ conceptions of the obligations of citizens, our freedoms and responsibilities, as well as the role of the government in our lives, ring much truer to me than do the Republicans’ positions. Over time, it’s become somewhat generally accepted that the Democrats are more idealistic and advocate bigger government and the Republicans are more practical and champion less government.
What the past decade and a half has made painfully apparent is that the daydreamers and utopian-fantasy believers are not the Democrats but the Republicans. It is mystifying how they have managed to position themselves as hardcore realists while selling failed economic policies, disastrous international actions, and a seriously flawed social vision.
Reading their position papers or listening to their almost mirror-perfect shared political positions, one imagines that their leaders still cook up political philosophies during drunken late-afternoon discussions at restricted social clubs. There, the hardcore financial wizards, combining the qualities of Baron Münchhausen and Charles Ponzi with the stunning abilities of the Disney Imagineers to make the unreal look real, pontificate long and loud on Marx, both Karl and Groucho.
There are things that we know – not philosophical and ideological concepts that we can speculate about or naively insist will work though they’ve never been tried. The consequences of legislation that passed and policies that were implemented can be documented.
The much-desired tax breaks for the richest Americans, combined with an easing of financial regulations and a curbing of environmental restrictions, are not just a far-distant fantasy currently offered by Republicans as a way of fixing the economy. Rather, this was the actual policy of the George W. Bush administration at the beginning of the last decade. If that mix was actually an economic bromide, our economy should be Garden of Eden-ing all over the place. Instead we’ve witnessed the worst economic collapse in recent history.
Shrinking the middle class – which leads to a small, very rich, and powerful oligarchy – also results in a very large, disenfranchised lower class. The larger this lower class grows, the more its members feel detached from the society, economy, and culture of the world they live right next to but in which they don’t participate. Now, the right loves and embraces the social analysis of pipe-smoking, Trotsky-quoting academics on the consequences of these social and economic disparities. The reason for this enthusiasm is that even if one doesn’t grasp the ideas presented, invariably the words chosen to present those ideas are so easily mocked.
Ignore the academics and philosophers. Look to Mexico, the drug wars, and the epidemic of kidnappings. Crime in Mexico had leveled off by the late 1990s, but it has risen astronomically since then, and continues to do so. In many Central and South American countries, many of the same conditions have long been the norm.
Is it really worth it for the rich to be so much richer that they begin to suck the life out of the middle class when the long-term consequences of their actions include increasing violence, crime, and real class warfare?
The following two quotes are presented as objective fact. I know nothing about the journal this appeared in (International Journal of Conflict and Violence) or the authors of the paper (Peter Imbusch, Michel Misse, and Fernando Carrión) but assume they are left-leaning or leftist academics. Still, if only some of what so many studies and papers say is on target, think of the kind of world we seem to be deliberately trying to create here in the United States.
“Latin America has long been a violence-prone continent. No other region in the world shows higher homicide rates, no other region shows such a variety of different types and forms of violence. A high incidence of crime, the proliferation of violent youth gangs, the prevalence of domestic violence, violence related to drug trafficking or money laundering as the burning issues of the day come on top of more historical forms of violence in the form of persistent civil wars, guerilla movements and death squads, state terrorism and dictatorships, social uprisings and violent revolutions. …
“The high incidence of violence in Latin America has above all to do with the great social inequality and the unequal life chances of Latin Americans, with the juxtaposition of extreme poverty and tremendous wealth, with sustained processes of social exclusion.”
Celebrating Our Own
American Theatre magazine just named our Arts editor, Robert Faires, one of the nation’s 12 most influential theatre critics: www.tcg.org/publications/at/nov11/critical_juncture.cfm. Faires is the only alt-weekly critic on the list.
Staff writer Jordan Smith will receive the Texas Coalition To Abolish the Death Penalty’s 2012 Media Award in appreciation of her “consistent, in-depth, and fair treatment of the death penalty and other criminal justice issues in The Austin Chronicle.” TCADP’s notification letter to Smith continues, “The Board particularly appreciates your coverage of the case of Larry Swearingen and your recent article, ‘Perry the Executioner,’ which sheds a light on Governor Perry’s role in the clemency process and his record on the death penalty.”
This article appears in November 11 • 2011.