Yesterday Paul Ryan released his budget proposal to cut 4.6 trilion dollars from the Federal Budget. His pretense is that this is about fiscal responsibility. What it is reallly about is bringing to completion the radical revolution of the Right that began with Ronald Reagan.
Much of the Ryan budget contains the seeds of ideas that Karl Marx had about economics. Ryan has decidedly placed an emphasis upon open class warfare against the middle class of America. Through tax cuts for the Rich and destruction of programs that benefit the middle class Ryan is redistributing trillions of dollars up ward to the wealtiest 1% of the population from the middle class.
His plan does nothing to stop the property confiscation caused by the destruction of good paying middle class jobs through outsourcing resulting in foreclosure on the homes of middle class people who could nolonger pay the mortgage because of unemployment or jobs at much lower wages. Because of this I begin to wonder openly whether the economic collapse in 2008 was intentionally caused to get middle class people out of the stock market and to create a crisis that could be utilized to enact more extreme measures that would enable the Right to complete the revolution of the wealthiest Americans against the rest of us. This is Marxian class warfare flipped on its head.
The Right obviously learned from history. As Naomi Klein documented so completely in her 2007 book Shock Doctrine the Right used democratic structures in their revolution but by creating a crisis they could demagogue to take power it also enabled them to be able to get many in the middle class to actively participate in their own demise economically. The Tea Party is the exhibit of record on this point with most of the initial funding coming from the 1% to create a phony grass roots protest movement demanding corporatist rule as proposed by Ryan's Marxism for the Rich.
Part of the Ryan budget is designed to complete another of Marx's ideas that after the revolution the state would begin to wither away. Under state Communism in Russia, the state did not wither away government bureaucracy grew. Privitization and tax cutting schemes are the means to causing the state to wither away leaving many right to life and quality of life issues to be decided by who can pay. America's motto then might be in profits we trust.
Another of the insideous aspects of Ryans proposal is that he doesn't hate Socialism except when it benefits the middle class. His budget is nothing if not a corporate welfare state. Tax cuts for the Rich paid for by the middle class and subsidies for corporations as well as individualizing profits while continuing socialized losses in a social safety net for corporations. Ultimately this will lead to corporate governence instead of self government.
Even as these things get exposed the Citizens United decision giving corporations free speech rights and making free speech a function of abilitiy to pay coupled with voter suppression and extensive use of gerrymandering, mean it will be very difficult to wrest control of the House of Representatives from the Republicans. That essentially blocks any desire or effort at restoring democracy to America for some years to come even though the Senate and President may be from the Democrats or another political party.
There is a lot more to the Paul Ryan budget than the Right pretends. Once they get Austerity in American democracy will be starved to death which is precisely what they want. We will then have corporate rule. That is also what the militarizing of our police departments is really all about. When people wake up to this radical revolution unrest and protest may well become the order of the day. We then have the laws on the books to call you a terrorist and you can be indefinely detained thanks to NDAA.
Comments