New Krugman:
When it comes to fiscal policy, then, Republicans have fallen victim to their own con game. And I would argue that something similar explains how the party lost its way, not just on fiscal policy, but on everything.
Think of it this way: For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.
At this point, however, the establishment has lost control. Meanwhile, base voters actually believe the stories they were told — for example, that the government is spending vast sums on things that are a complete waste or at any rate don’t do anything for people like them. (Don’t let the government get its hands on Medicare!) And the party establishment can’t get the base to accept fiscal or political reality without, in effect, admitting to those base voters that they were lied to.
More here.
Back during WWII, Finland, a nation we generally think of as being pretty darned civilized, took action that, at first glance, appears to be downright bizarre. They sided with Nazi Germany of their own free will. Why on earth would a civilized nation ever do anything like this? History. The Soviet Union, which borders Finland, had a very, very long history of dominating the Northern European nation, first as Russia, then in the twentieth century as the USSR, and Soviet troops were on the move. Germany did not have this kind of relationship with Finland, as evil as the Nazi regime was, which made it kind of a no-brainer to side with the Germans against the Soviets, who the Finns KNEW to be a threat.
That's how I kind of feel about national politics here in the US in the twenty first century. Both the Democratic and the Republican Parties are horrific institutions. Both want to oppress American citizens, whether they admit it or not. But the major threat, historically speaking, comes from the GOP, which has been going after working people for decades and decades. And like the Soviet soldiers of the late 1930s, the Republicans are definitely on the move today. I mean bat-shit crazy on the move. They are definitely the known threat. So American liberals, like their Finnish counterparts some seventy years ago with the Nazis, reflexively side with the Democrats. I mean, of course, the Republicans certainly aren't going to further any progressive goals; no way liberals are going to support them.
But the real downside here is that, also like the Finns before us, when we support bad guys in order to neutralize a threat from other bad guys, we are, in the end, supporting bad guys. And that's where the WWII comparison ends. The Allies won the war and Finland managed to evade Stalin's Iron Curtain, becoming a client state for the US, a happy ending. But in American politics in the early twentieth century, there is no equivalent Yankee knight on a white horse to save the country. When we support the Democratic vision of a socially liberal but economically oppressive nation, we're cutting off our noses to spite our faces.
And I just don't see a way out of it.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
|