Krugman Scores Again

by Rich Miles

Here's the paragraph of the week, from Paul Krugman of the New York Times and Princeton University. I tried to reduce it to one sentence, but I couldn't do it. So, for your reading enjoyment:

It seems almost superfluous, given all that, to mention the final insult: many of the most vocal austerians are, of course, hypocrites. Notice, in particular, how suddenly Republicans lost interest in the budget deficit when they were challenged about the cost of retaining tax cuts for the wealthy. But that won’t stop them from continuing to pose as deficit hawks whenever anyone proposes doing something to help the unemployed.

I mean, ain't that great??? This from a column entitled "Appeasing the Bond Gods", in which Dr. Krugman shows us how Republican operatives are treating the bulk of the American people like human sacrifices whose only function is to appease the gods.

I've probably said this before, but I think based on Krugman's column today and on current circumstances in our country, it bears saying again: What do the repugs plan to do for servants and peons, once they wipe all of us poor and middle-class people out? When I first posed the question, I intended it to be more or less humorous, but as time passes it seems a more and more serious concern for the poor Repugnicans. If all of us Democrats and other lefties are reduced to struggling skeletons fighting each other for scraps of food, or worse if we start dying of starvation, which is the logical extreme of Republican policy, then what will the fat cats do for valets, butlers, cooks, etc.? Surely they won't have to polish their own shoes, prepare their own meals, wipe their own asses, etc., etc., etc?

OK, so it's a long time till that happens - but the process has to start somewhere. And driving the bulk of the middle and lower classes to abject poverty is, as far as I can see, a good first step toward it. And they (the repugs) have been embarked on this mass murder for at least 40 years, since Nixon was president.

Add to this direct effort at impoverishing us, there are wars to kill off our young men, ignoring global warming, and for all I really know a concerted effort to purchase land away from the coasts, so when global warming kicks in, and the ice caps melt, and the coasts close in on us, they'll have some place to go, and we won't.

There is lots more, but I'll leave that to your imagination. I also realize how paranoid this whole article is. I at least acknowledge that there is no organized plot to achieve this - at least, not yet.

But if the gap between the richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor continues to widen, as it has done for the past 25-40 years, none of this - NONE of it, mind you - is impossible. No matter how unlikely it may seem, it's not impossible.

Read your science fiction. Note how much of what USED to be science fiction is now fact. And consider how much more could become so. Try reading "The Handmaid's Tale", by Margaret Atwood, to see how people can become second, third or lower-class citizens in the service of the wealthy. In Atwood's tale, rented or hired wombs. In The Terminator, men vs. machines, machines created by wealthy men who wanted control of Earth. And of course, Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, among many others he wrote that spoke to the same topic.

Men like Paul Krugman are, whether they know it or not, fighting against these sorts of things. Unfortunately, before most of us will join the battle, we will require proof that amounts to nearly losing the battle. That's called complacency.

In the paragraph of the week above, substitute "the poor and lower classes" for "the unemployed", and it works much better for the right-wing extremists. Or maybe even "the unwashed lower classes". Or worse.