To
suggest that conservatism somehow rises
to the legitimate equivalency of liberalism
or socialism
is to engage in ideological affirmative
action."
---from "The
Quotations of Chairman Joe"
Economist
Paul Krugman, writing in Friday's New
York Times (1), excoriates
the media and its insistence upon the 'equivalency of
ideas' for the rise of the penultimate con-man Paul Ryan and, by
extension, the rise of the ultimate con-man
Caesar Disgustus himself.
Considering the former, Krugman writes of Ryan:
"Look,
the single animating principle of everything Ryan did and proposed
was to comfort the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted.
Can anyone name a single instance in which his supposed concern
about the deficit made him willing to impose any burden on the
wealthy, in which his supposed compassion made him willing to improve
the lives of the poor? Remember, he voted against the Simpson-Bowles
debt commission proposal not because of its real flaws, but because
it would raise taxes and fail to repeal Obamacare.
"And
his 'deficit reduction' proposals were always frauds. The
revenue loss from tax cuts always exceeded any explicit spending
cuts, so the pretense of fiscal responsibility came entirely from
'magic asterisks': extra revenue from closing unspecified loopholes,
reduced spending from cutting unspecified programs. I called
him a flimflam man back in 2010, and nothing he has done since has
called that judgement into question.
"So
how did such an obvious con artist get a reputation for seriousness
and fiscal probity? Basically, he was the beneficiary of ideological
affirmative action.
"Even
now, in the Age of Trump, there are a substantial number of opinion
leaders—especially, but not only, in the news media—whose
careers, whose professional brands, rest on the notion that they
stand above the political fray. For such people, asserting that
both sides have a point, that there are serious, honest people on
both left and right, practically defines their identity." (2)
There
are serious political thinkers on the right. Krugman's
colleague at The
New York Times, David
Brooks, is one of them. But, as Krugman is quite right to
observe: "While
there are some serious, honest conservative thinkers, they have no
influence on the modern Republican Party." (3)
Citing
what Krugman calls "asymmetric
polarization" caused
in turn by a "motivated
gullibility",
"Centrists
who couldn't find real examples of serious, honest conservatives
lavished praise on politicians who played that role on TV. Paul
Ryan wasn't actually very good at faking it: true fiscal experts
ridiculed his 'mystery meat' budgets. But never mind. The
narrative required that the character Ryan played exists,
so everyone pretended
that he was the genuine article. "
I've
written about this false equivalency before, one essay about the
minimum wage leaps immediately to mind (4). We've raised the
minimum wage more than a score of times since its inception in the
1930's and not a single job has been lost. Nevertheless,
whenever progressives lead
a campaign to raise the minimum standard the same hoary argument that
it will cost jobs is regularly given equal time on television and
more than equal time on talk radio. In this case, one of the
more egregious examples, the relative merits of the opposing
argument are
not equivalent. The conservatives are here, as in so much else,
simply dead wrong. The historical record clearly
demonstrates their error. Nevertheless, they
are paraded out upon the stage and by so doing error is granted
legitimacy. This savaging of universal empirical observation is
the beginning of a not so slow slide down the slippery slope wherein
facts are opposed by 'alternate' facts, the known universe by
the 'alternate' universe of Fox
and Fiends.
As
Krugman duly notes, these same dynamics that produced the laughable
posturing of Paul Ryan are the same forces that produced Donald
J. tRUMP.
Like Ryan,Caesar Disgustus has not emerged from under
a cabbage leaf, he is, in fact, the
product of the bastard union of an "orgy of false equivalence"
joined with a breathtaking public gullibility.
The
Republic appears to have survived Paul Ryan. It is not entirely
clear if the Republic can survive Caesar Disgustus.
"An Br'er Putin,
he jus' laugh and laugh"
Impeach
and Imprison
________________
(1).
Krugman, Paul. "From Flimflam to Fascism" The
New York Times. Friday, April 13, 2018. Page A27
(2).
Ibid
(3).
Ibid
(4).
See March 29, 2018: Minimum Wage, Maximum Myth, Dog-Eared
Objections, Into the Abyss.
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