“I think what people like Paul Ryan are trying to do is set us on a glide path to a much harsher society,” Krugman now says. “A country in which, step by step, more and more people are cast out into a situation of not having health insurance and poverty, and so we slide back to a Victorian notion that life is full of evils and that’s too bad but that’s the way that God made the world. That large numbers of the poor, large numbers of the elderly just live in dire poverty and don’t have health care because life is tough.” For two years, Krugman has been arguing that this trajectory might have been averted if only Obama had been a little less deferential, a little more demanding, a little more alarmed. And so Krugman has given the debate on the left its shape: whether the president could have mounted a more effective defense of the welfare state, and whether liberalism’s tragic flaw is Obama’s instinct for conciliation or his leading critic’s naïveté.
It’s been a fashionable line of thinking for awhile now. Mention the words “Liberal” and “welfare state”, and what’s generally the result of this word association game? Clueless, out of touch, careless, weak, fiscally irresponsible…the list goes on, and you know it as well as I do. Conservatives and the Far Right have created a narrative in which Liberals and the issues they champion are considered enemies of good and decent Americans. That this narrative is supported and advanced by the Mainstream Media (I know; WHAT Liberal Media??) is by now nothing if not an article of faith. Even more disturbing is the reality that Republicans have time and time again convinced Americans to vote against their own interests. Propaganda wasn’t just the province of the Nazis and Soviets; it’s as old as politics…and today’s GOP has perfected the art.
Those of us who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 actually were naive enough to believe that we’d elected someone who would correct the hard Right-ward drift that this country had been propagandized into. Imagine the ensuing surprise and disappointment when Obama has progressively (no pun intended) tacked to the Right. Instead of taking advantage of the Democratic majority he inherited, Obama continually and consistently caved into Republican demands. In coordination with Majority Leader Harry Reid, Obama managed to turn a 59-41 Democratic majority into a functional minority. Republicans figured out early on that Democrats possessed neither the vision nor the cojones to use their majority to their advantage, and so they’ve continued pushing their slash-and-burn agenda. Until and unless Democrats managed to collectively grow a pair, America will continue to become a harsher, less compassionate place…because that’s what the Americans Republicans want to create. I got mine; you can damned well get your own. Unfortunately, American voters have been complicit in the creation of a two-tiered society. They’ve elected the people who are working to make it happen.
A very wise man once said that Americans get exactly the quality of leadership they deserve. How sad…and how true.
Part of the problem is that the Left has no voice, no powerful, charismatic presence that can articulate and advance an agenda. Well, actually there is someone like that, but the (allegedly Liberal) media finds it hard to love a shy, self-effacing, bearded academic who’s the smartest guy in any room he happens to occupy. Paul Krugman is, in my eyes at least, possessed of the single smartest and most common sense approach out of the morass we find ourselves in. A professor of Economics and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and a blogger and columnist with the New York Times, Krugman has a platform and credibility possessed by few others. He’s quietly and consistently advanced an argument that bears being taken seriously…and yet it’s as if he’s speaking to a convention of crickets.
IF Barack Obama is serious about pulling this economy out of the toilet, and IF he’s serious about combatting the mean-spirited agenda represented by Paul Ryan’s budget, then Paul Krugman’s ideas need to be heard and taken seriously. Austerity is not the answer, and Krugman makes a very compelling argument for why this is true. Republicans may claim that cutting spending will do everything from creating jobs to curing gout…but the reality is far different. Krugman’s reality has as much to do with the forgotten millions of unemployed Americans as it does with abstract economic theory.
We have it within our power to choose what kind of America we want to be…and I fear that we are allowing the selfish and self-absorbed to set the agenda. Do we want to be the kind of America that looks our for one another, who lends a hand where one is needed because we know that it’s the right thing to do AND it helps all of us? Or do we want to be the kind of sink-or-swim America where you succeed on your own and when you run into trouble…well, you’re on your own as well?
From where I sit, I fear that we’re becoming the kind of America where those who have a job are perfectly OK with setting those who don’t adrift. This “blame the victim” mentality is all well and good…until you become one of those collecting unemployment. Metaphorically setting the unemployed adrift on ice floes may seem like a good “small government” idea…you think about the reality that once a person is unemployed, the economy loses the benefit of their purchasing power. Unemployment insurance is as much about helping the unemployed as it is about protecting the economy from the recessionary spiral unemployment creates. It’s not just about “small govenment”.
I understand that difficult times creates stresses that test a people and their resolve. Yes, times are tough, but Americans have always been tough, and we’ve always come through tough times because we’ve pulled together. I still harbor the hope that this recession will prove to be yet another example of Americans realizing that we’re better together. We can still triumph over those who place greed and self-interest over people.
So what kind of America do we want to be?
