model of war

[Roger Odisio]

At 04:42 PM 6/9/1999 +1000, Rob Schaap wrote:
>G'day Peter,
>
>>I skimmed No One Left to Lie To again and like to imagine one of those
>>conservatives residing in their conservative city reading this:
>>
>>"But, as we are endlessly instructed, while rich people will *not* work
>>unless they are given money, poor people will *only* work if they are not.
>>(These are the two modern meanings of the term "incentive": a tax break on
>>the one hand and the threat of the workhouse on the other.) And, once the
>>Democratic party had adopted this theology, the poor had no one to whom they
>>could turn. The immediate consequence of this was probably an intended one:
>>the creation of a large helot underclass disciplined by fear and scarcity,
>>subject to endless surveillance, and used as a weapon against any American
>>worker lucky enough to hold a steady or unionized job."
>
>
>Terrific stuff, eh?  I'm a rusted-on Hitchens fan, myself (and not just
>because he's a chain-smoking, booze-slurping, middle-aged,
>recalcitrant-leftie, culturally-insensitive lover of words - but it all
>helps).  I am reminded here, though, of JK Galbraith's visit to Oz in the
>late '80s (after a few years of Labor's 'reforms').  He was asked, as
>impressive foreigners always are by our culturally cringing media, what he
>thought of Australia (a question often breathlessly asked just as said
>luminary is shuffling down the steps from the aircraft), and replied thus:
>"Let me get this right - you guys reckon that if you pay poor people less,
>they work harder - and if you pay rich ones more, they work harder?"  The
>journalist did not reply.

Hitchins indeed has borrowed from Galbraith, but both statements have their
origin in Galbraith's earlier summation of Reaganism:  the central idea is
that poor people have too much money and rich people not enough.  Clear,
concise, and the basis for further discussion if the left was a political force.

As for Hitchens, he is easier to like from a distance. It looks like his
opportunistic impeachment affidavit publicity blitzkrieg was successful.  It
provided the perfect platform for his book tour. I suppose if you think he
has written an important book such things are easy to overlook. 

But he is right about Clinton, and has been from the beginning.  Clinton, in
public view, has turned from just another clever smoozing
politician-on-the-make, albeit with a mastery of policy wonkery to be used
for the public good, who as a teenager shook hands with Kennedy at the White
House, leaving him starry eyed with a political mission, into a monster with
bloody hands--blood from Rickey Ray Rector during the '92 campaign (the
executed retard who saved the piece of pie from his last meal to be eaten
later) to the blood of people on a bridge in Kosovo.  There is no way for me
to look at him without revulsion.

 
As I recall, Hitchens was showing the monster inside Clinton early on, by,
for example, piecing together his womanizing with his support of the welfare
bill (not to mention the firing of Jocelyn Elders for discussing masturbation).