There’s this Bolshevik propaganda poster I saw many years ago that I’d give my right nut to find again. It’s a picture of a bunch of (literally) flower sniffing aristocrats on one side, looking in horror at what’s in front of them: an assembly of state and religious officials, holding up a giant man-made flower with severed human heads as grains of pollen. It was titled “anti-Semitism”.
The meaning of the poster is a critique of those who live quite well of the functioning of the state that supports them, with the horrific realization of what needs to happen to maintain their carefree lifestyle.
And that’s what’s happening with this “critique” of our “inefficient” government playing brinksmanship with government shutdowns and default over Obamacare.
It’s one of my pet peeves with bourgeois press magazines like the Economist, which can otherwise be quite informative and journalistic. It’s this paternalistic tone that government never quite meets up with their expectations, as if the will of the bourgeoisie is to be followed by all of society with no mess or complications.
Sorry, but an exploitation of the population by depriving it of basic necessities does not come across simply. It requires a lot of demagoguery, and a lot of mess, and a lot of rough running government. And considering bourgeois institutions have been clamoring for “entitlement reform” (i.e. gutting benefits we pay into) for decades, this is a mess of their making. Meaning, institutions like The Economist are to blame. Not the politicians who make their careers off catering to these interests.
If you’ll notice, Wall Street didn’t sink that much. Meaning they were aware of where the government actually stood with their interests. They and their institutions have been clamoring to dismantle the social safety net for decades, so they see it as the standard price of doing business.
This brinkmanship isn’t just about Obamacare. It’s about the government’s overall role in providing for human welfare. And the repercussions about what happens with Obamacare reverberate to other programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Ted Cruz and the Tea Party likes of him (Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, etc.) may come across sounding crazy, but there’s a method behind their madness. They know the powerful interests, the mainstream powerful interests, that give them the wink and the nudge to continue. And since they are the most militant at pursuing these interests, it’s why they’ll continue to have a forum for their platforms. And this will continue to be an issue.