...it's his phrasemaking that's so stunning. "Personalizing" Social Security, not privatizing it. The "death tax." I'm in awe - I wish we had one of him.
Doug
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This sort of phrase making works if there is no issue. It's good for fixing things that aren't broken and creating needs where there is no want. It's works like neoliberal capitalism. Nada y pues nada es nada.
For example, there is no crisis in the social security system. There is no crisis in public education that more money won't fix. There is no problem with taxing estates---it's been done since the middle ages. The tax is applied to the estate and not the person who died. Estates don't disappear when the owner does, so that's why we tax them.
There was no problem with public utilities until they were liberated from the public. There is no problem with values. Some people have one set, others have others. We argue. Where's the problem? The list of non-issue issues goes on and on.
Now consider some different issues like Iraq. The US military liberated Fallujah. Too bad nobody can to live there. Why is that? Well, there is no Fallujah. It's been liberated from existence, get it?
By the way, where is Oshama bin Laden? Presumably, he is in hiding. That's how come we can't find him. He is hiding. Get it?
Nobody is fooled by this nonsense. It's like pretend. Let's pretend that things are just fine. Okay. I am pretending. Now what? Looks like the same old shit to me. I am not sure I understand how this phrase making magic is supposed to work.
Carl takes a dark tone against Doug's rosy optimism:
``Wishing for the left to have a sleazemeister like Lutz is like pining, in an earlier thread, for the left to have hate machines like the right does.''
I was thinking on that thread most of the week. It's easy to see it as a hate machine. But it is more difficult to see the positive aspect.
The positive view understands the hate machine as a whitewing identity movement. In this view our regular non-reflective middle class white guy in suburbia needs an identity, since he has none. That's what the talk shows supply.
I have opinions. They are my opinions. I have a reason to live! I live to hate all those pussy liberals fucking things up.
Show'm whose boss Homer. Express yourself. Rattle off a few epistemological readymades you heard on the radio. Show the wife and kids you are a manly man. Vote for nasty George and Arnold the slug.
Last night David Brooks called Paul Wolfowitz a bleeding heart. Gee, Dave you think Fallujah was urban renewal?
CG