The Right-Wing Prescription for Economic Recovery: Lionize the Rich and Demonize the Poor

[marmar]

The Right-Wing Prescription for Economic Recovery: Lionize the Rich and Demonize the Poor

By Dylan Headley, AlterNet. Posted July 11, 2009.

Wing-nut commentary about the crisis blames the victims. As if things weren't already bad enough.



As if the fact of the world financial meltdown – which, one is told, is the worst since the Great Depression -- isn’t dreary enough, the steady stream of right-wing commentary about the crisis makes matters worse in the salt-in-the-wound sense that it, typically, blames the victims, lionizes the villains, attempts to deflect blame from the criminals and proffers that the greed that totally poisoned the system in the first place is in fact the answer to all our problems.

Take, for instance, Ross Douthat, a young conservative pundit whose white, privileged, Harvard-educated, East Coast Money pedigree makes him uniquely qualified to lecture the lower classes on how to behave. He advises the mopey, repressed, upper-middle "creative" class to swing, baby. But he tells the irresponsible rabble of the lower orders, on the other hand, to chill:

Our meritocrats (sic) could stand to leaven their careerism with a little more romantic excess. (Though such excess is more appropriate in the young, it should be emphasized, than in middle-aged essayists and parents.) But most Americans, particularly those of modest means, would benefit from greater caution and stability in their romantic entanglements.

For their own good, of course. Satisfying Douthat's own priggish sense of morality has nothing to do with it. Nothing. Neither does the right-wing, lizard-brained, shorthand of promiscuous poor people = more poor babies = more welfare = higher taxes have anything to do with it.

Actually, this may truly not have anything to do with it for Douthat, whose foremost pleasure in life seems to be scolding people about sex, but it does have something to do with it for the right-wingers who, when they say "liberty" and "freedom" actually mean "the right to economic sociopathy." ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/141035/the_right-wing_prescription_for_economic_recovery%3A_lionize_the_rich_and_demonize_the_poor/

[RoccoR5955]

1. How is this news? Same old story from the Right. n/t

[tanyev]

2. "Our meritocrats could stand to leaven their careerism with a little more romantic excess."

:wtf:

I can just picture a conversation between this guy and Sarah Palin. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

[Moostache]

3. We desperately need a secular version of this...

I stand in 100% opposition to EVERYTHING that "the Family" stands for, but on one point I can find common ground with them. That point is the power of small groups of committed individuals, but whereas "the Family" depends upon a Bronze Age myth and a lust for power to lord OVER the people, I believe its well past time for a few secular humanist movements to steal a page from this very same playbook and begin to codify and standardize a new "religion"; one based not on revealed truth, but instead determined to bring forth as much learned truth as the universe will reveal and human intelligence can comprehend. If this means that we give in to the canard that "science is just another kind of religion", then so be it. These men and others like them have flipped society globally on its head. The enrichment of the power elites at the expense of all others is reaching a critical mass. If calling science "religion" could be a first step to stopping the current trajectory of human society towards self-inflicted extinction, then I believe it would be a noble thing to do, even if it is patently false.

While I am fully cognizant of the fact that "science" is a technique and not an all encompassing belief system, I can see the potential for great good by using "science" in place of "Jesus" and using self-reinforcing feedbacks to prevent abuse. This system that the "Family" has used to build their power base is an impressive success story with horrifying ramifications because of the motives of its adherents. Maybe I am being too idealistic here, but I can see a useful and beneficial path for this kind of movement when it is divorced from its outdated and sexist origins.

If we do not find the strength to build such a counter balance, then the X-ians and religious whack jobs of every other ilk can be self-satisfied in the knowledge that "end times" will almost surely be visited upon us all, as the planet and nature have their response to our deluded ways, fueled in many ways by the warped ideologies of men like "the Family". I imagine though, that there will be a lot of disappointed people when their chosen savior fails to materialize to save them as the "elect". Their shock would be an appropriate visual image of humanity itself, as we are relegated to the dust bins of history, a failed evolutionary pathway - the risen, intelligent ape-descendant; incapable of social adapting to share power for the common good instead of the enrichment of an elite.

The studies of chimps that show an inherent inability to control themselves in certain decision making processes are very illuminating in this regard. The lower primates cannot help it on their own...when presented with a proposition that requires delayed gratification for greater rewards, they ALWAYS take the immediate gratification...sadly, "the Family" is a case study of how this phenomena is not limited to our genetic cousins alone...

[Enthusiast]

4. K&R, The economic meltdown has

not changed the RW one iota. They have always demonized the poor. Same old, same old. They remain assholes.