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Toles: Why is anyone astonished by the resurgence of the left?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/31/why-is-anyone-astonished-by-resurgence-left/Why is anyone astonished by the resurgence of the left?
By Tom Toles
January 31, 2019 at 10:08 AM
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We are at the end of the conservative revolution because the accumulated wealth disparity they never promised, but surely delivered, is now so pronounced that everybody sees it. And the new ultra-rich simply cannot bring themselves to help correct the imbalance. They are so besotted with their personal net worth and wealth-ranking that they are paralyzed in their death grip on their money. The death grip that is the death knell of their appeal.
Regular Americans, whether they are moderately well-off or really struggling, are working their heads off to just stay afloat and no longer see any realistic prospect that the “EVERYBODY gets rich!” implied promise of laissez-faire capitalism is ever going to deliver for them.
In addition to the shared-prosperity fail of the conservative project comes another market fail of even more monstrous proportions: the unwillingness of energy producers or users to take responsibility for their externalities of carbon pollution. The market purists have been content to decree that loading carbon dioxide into the atmosphere should be booked as “free.” Nobody had to pay, except future citizens. And no cost piled onto them, including death by fire or drowning, was considered an excessively high price for them to pay. Like the mountains of plastic garbage clogging the oceans, the costs of produce-and-dump-onto-somebody-else is an economic system that people are eventually going to become fed up with.
The way the conservative movement chose to deal with the mounting contradictions between promise and outcome has not been to moderate their ambitions or agenda. It has been to lie and discredit facts and science. Their most recent policy “triumph” has been to cut taxes on the rich AGAIN, with the same promises that everybody now KNOWS are fictitious. The result has been MORE money for the rich, LARGER deficits and no accountability. Never accountability. The other way they have managed to hold their dishonesty-riddled movement together is by doubling down on racial and ethnic animosity. Great plan. Thanks.
***
By Tom Toles
January 31, 2019 at 10:08 AM
***
We are at the end of the conservative revolution because the accumulated wealth disparity they never promised, but surely delivered, is now so pronounced that everybody sees it. And the new ultra-rich simply cannot bring themselves to help correct the imbalance. They are so besotted with their personal net worth and wealth-ranking that they are paralyzed in their death grip on their money. The death grip that is the death knell of their appeal.
Regular Americans, whether they are moderately well-off or really struggling, are working their heads off to just stay afloat and no longer see any realistic prospect that the “EVERYBODY gets rich!” implied promise of laissez-faire capitalism is ever going to deliver for them.
In addition to the shared-prosperity fail of the conservative project comes another market fail of even more monstrous proportions: the unwillingness of energy producers or users to take responsibility for their externalities of carbon pollution. The market purists have been content to decree that loading carbon dioxide into the atmosphere should be booked as “free.” Nobody had to pay, except future citizens. And no cost piled onto them, including death by fire or drowning, was considered an excessively high price for them to pay. Like the mountains of plastic garbage clogging the oceans, the costs of produce-and-dump-onto-somebody-else is an economic system that people are eventually going to become fed up with.
The way the conservative movement chose to deal with the mounting contradictions between promise and outcome has not been to moderate their ambitions or agenda. It has been to lie and discredit facts and science. Their most recent policy “triumph” has been to cut taxes on the rich AGAIN, with the same promises that everybody now KNOWS are fictitious. The result has been MORE money for the rich, LARGER deficits and no accountability. Never accountability. The other way they have managed to hold their dishonesty-riddled movement together is by doubling down on racial and ethnic animosity. Great plan. Thanks.
***
6 replies
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