... Animus against Big Government has always had a populist appeal and surely some of Washington’s clunky actions have fed this disdain. But Reaganism is, in essence, the populist, smiling face of Big Money ruthlessly neutralizing the one institution that could threaten corporate dominance of America, a democratized and energized federal government.Today’s victorious corporate Republican chieftains and their Tea Party foot soldiers are just the latest embodiment of Reagan’s dark legacy. They favor cutting taxes for the rich; slashing social programs; reducing regulations on corporations; weakening the power of unions; ignoring needed investments in national infrastructure; disdaining environmental science; and trusting “the magic of the market.”
This Republican strategy that Reagan popularized in the early 1980s has – over the past three decades – returned the United States to a second Gilded Age of extreme wealth at the top, a shrinking middle class, growing desperation among the working classes, rampant stock speculation, and a bubble-and-bust economy.
Yet amazingly, millions of Americans went to the polls on Tuesday and voted for this approach. ...
And much more pertinent words from Parry analyzing this mass hysteria is available, here.
But there is more at Consortium News with another former Radio Free Kansas guest, "The News Dissector" Danny Schechter who writes there:
To Jon Stewart, the Left is equally to blame as the Right.
“Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own?” he asked during his recent “Rally to Restore Sanity” putting Left and Right in the same boat and pissing off activists in the process.
“We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is — on the brink of catastrophe — torn by polarizing hate, and how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done. But the truth is we do. We work together to get things done every damn day. The only place we don’t is here [pointing to Capitol Hill] or on cable TV.”
Commented writer Chris Hedges: “The rally delivered a political message devoid of reality or content. The corruption of electoral politics by corporate funds and lobbyists, the naive belief that we can somehow vote ourselves back to democracy, was ignored for emotional catharsis. The Right hates. The liberals laugh. And the country is taken hostage.”
So, as the votes are counted, as the Right cheers and liberals nurse their tears, we are all, in blue states and red states, still stuck with profound economic challenges that are deeper than most of us know.
They are structural and systemic problems, and not merely a function of partisan political differences.The Republicans have no economic plan to change this, and have insured that the Democrats can’t really implement what plans, inadequate as they are, to stem the tide.
The blame game has been notched up with no end in sight.
It’s a stalemate, mate.
You be the judge, read the complete article at Consortium News. And the game is finally going to involve many of the working poor and those desirous of radical change (for better or worse) who have sat on the sidelines.
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