Romney screams at an OWS protestor to "Move to North Korea!" if he doesn't like Romney's economic plans. The guy must have been one of the "47%".Leave it to Willard Mitt to dig his electoral grave ever deeper by shooting from the hip. Last week it was the politically motivated attack on Obama as an "apologist" and "appeaser" in the wake of the attack on the Libyan Consulate. It was unseemly, reeked of desperation and cynicism and didn't go down with the majority of sane voters.
Now, this week, the Mittster's imploded by making a derogatory comment against the "47%" who support Barack Obama in most consistent polls. (It ought to REALLY be at least 90% against this entitled, snot -nosed, 1 % doofus with hundreds of millions tucked away in Swiss Banks and the Caymans!)
Anyway, to cut to the chase, Romney was caught out by Mother Jones magazine, which published the Romney video capturing his derelict remarks, to wit, that "nearly half of President Obama's voters are dependent on the government" and "pay no income tax". Understandably this mind-fucked tommyrot elicited swift, hostile, and passionate reactions and not merely from the Left blogosphere or media.
One of the critics was conservative writer David Brooks of The New York Times who titled his op-ed column today "Thurston Howell Romney," a reference to the wealthy character from the 60s sitcom Gilligan's Island. In that delightful comedy series, you could always count on Thurston Howell to have no remote clue regarding the lives or needs of the other shipwrecked souls. Even in an environment of limited resources and means, where almost every manjack worked his tail off, there was Thurston, invariably reclining in a hammock stretched between two palm trees, demanding his Pina Colatas. This image fits Mitt to a tee, though his millions of acolytes will likely scream "Foul!"
In his op-ed Brooks writes:
"Romney's comment is a country-club fantasy. It’s what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other. It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney.”
Well, at least the negative views of sensible and intelligent people. Those of a different economic class from Romney's who aren't prepared to be used by his kind as toilet paper! (But I guess many working class folk, including those receiving gov't benefits, are!)
But Brooks is exactly correct, and why not? Romney is really articulating an embedded Social Darwinism that seeks to impose Darwinian natural selection within the milieu of social classes and economics. The very term "rugged individualist" reeks of this, the adjective "rugged" serving as an indicator that only "rugged members of the species" (i.e. fatass rich guys) are fit to survive and SHOULD survive.
This, of course, echoes the Social Darwinist pseudo-science of British philosopher Herbert Spencer. Richard Hofstadter, in his book: Social Darwinism in American Thought, (American Historical Association, 1955) observes that Spencer rejected all government services for the poor and disabled as encouraging a fundamental weakness in the society which "induced corruption, sloth and all the other vices". It was also Spencer, not Darwin, who coined the phrase "the survival of the fittest".
Author Susan Jacoby (The Age Of American Unreason, p. 70) noted:
"Spencer preached the gospel of laissez-faire economics as the only way to ensure that the fittest would triumph in society through a process of 'social selection' equivalent to Darwin's natural selection".
She adds:
"The British philosopher was unequivocally and fanatically opposed to all government programs that he viewed as obstacles to social selection, including public education, health regulations, tariffs and even postal service."
Just like Mitt Romney, he insisted on no dependence on any government services whatever. From Romney's statement about the 47% it is also quite obvious to me that he agrees with one of Spencer's favorite sayings:
"If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well that they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best that they should die."
In other words, the fucker prefers that the 47% of us who insist there IS a role for government to act as a positive bulwark against the incursion of corporate fascists, , die. No wonder Josh Barro, in a commentary for Bloomberg, called Romney's remarks "an utter disaster" for the GOP presidential nominee.
Indeed, Romney essentially doubled down on his ill-advised comments captured by Mother Jones! Romney stood by his comments last night, saying his message was "not elegantly stated." Yeppers, I guess when one effectively belches out "I wish those 47% Obama-backing motherfuckers would just die!" it's difficult to put elegantly! Romney in his double-down said:
"The president believes in what I've described as a government-centered society, where government plays a larger and larger role, provides for more and more of the needs of the individuals, I happen to believe instead in a free enterprise, free individual society where people pursuing their dreams are able to employ one another, build enterprises, build the strongest economy in the world."
This is typical entitled, rich man doggerel, and here's why:
- Romney makes not ONE mention that his own party and followers are as "government-centered" as any others in this nation, it's just that they opt for different government baubles. Indeed, the GOP House and assorted lackeys have been screeching that the approach of budget "sequestration" (Jan. 2) is "disastrous" because up to 20,000 or more defense jobs may be lost. These are mainly in Repuke districts, or governed states. The jobs are contract- based meaning the government doles out juicy contracts to support the workers. HOW is this not a form of corporate-worker welfare to those states?
- The recent TIME ('One Nation Subsidized') notes that corporations in this country still receive more corporate welfare by more than three times, than citizens receive via social welfare. So who are the Nanny -state teat suckers here? Really?
- Under Obama's presidency - following the disastrous financial collapse under Gee Dumbya - the government had to help out millions tossed out of jobs because they'd no where else to go! What? Mitt would have them drop dead on the streets like his pal Spencer, or beg at charities, when constant news appeared that all food pantries were running low?
- Mitt talks about people being "free to pursue their own dreams" and "build enterprises to employ one another" but this is only possible when aggregate demand supports it! It also presupposes ample money in circulation to be able to purchase what those enterprises produce. This is why as Matt Miller observes in The Tyranny of Bad Ideas, dissing the continuance of tax cuts in the U.S. as opposed to expanded social welfare programs as in Europe, that those nations (i.e. Germany) which didn't follow the U.S. low tax model fared much better because their strategy fueled aggregate demand, not supply side.
- Mitt's reference to "free enterprise", i.e. laissez - faire economics, shows clearly that he's a Social Darwinist. He believes every manjack -individual needs to make it on his own, despite the fact that corporations (including the multinationals) are all arrayed against the average citizen in whatever goal he seeks to achieve. These impersonal monied forces then, when the citizen is unaligned, can defeat his best efforts over and over....even in such a basic activity as stock investing....since the single citizen is no match for flash trade algorithms or computers.
- As for the "not paying taxes malarkey", the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, notes that about 46% of Americans paid no income tax in 2011. But the reason isn't that they're getting away with anything, but that their incomes are too LOW! More than one-third of those who don't pay income or payroll taxes have incomes of less than $20,000. I'd like to see Willard Mitt try to live on THAT for one year! Of the people who don't pay income or payroll taxes, according to the Center more than half are elderly. In other words, they ALREADY paid 40 to 50 years of income taxes and now are living off meager pensions or Social Security - not fat checks of $2 million per year from capital disbursements arriving from Swiss Banks in Zurich! Oh, and by the way, those seniors still have to cough up for property taxes - often thousands a year!
Mitt also said that citizens aren't entitled to health care as a right (which exactly shows what he will do to Medicaid and Medicare if elected), but he is wrong. The U.S. was actually a signatory to a 1994 UN declaration that health care IS a right! And if it is not to be such under Romney, then what might we expect?
Imagine we're some time into a Romney presidency and he's made all sorts of changes. You're in agonizing abdominal pain and it gets worse and worse. You are beside yourself and phone 911. The ambulance comes, and a resident quickly diagnoses appendicitis and that your appendix may soon burst. However, reps of the collection company that have taken over the hospital's ER descend on you and demand full payment - a tab of $13 thousand, before they lift one scalpel. (See e.g. The Economist, 'Work in Progress' under Mitt Romney's Economics, April 21st, p. 39).
What do you do? Cry boo hoo hoo. Or maybe BWAAAHAHHAHA! Wishing now that you had not voted Romney? Or what? (Understand again that under Obama's health care law such shenanigans will not be allowed, but Romney says he will shoot it down).
So what do you do? Well, how does one say this, repent at leisure? All we can tell the apparent half of the 99 percent determined to support this 1 percenter, is 'Be careful what you wish for' because those birds may come home to roost on your own head!Under a Romney presidency and with Reep help in the House and Senate and Obama's health care law repealed (possibly thanks to the Supremes), it is possible to envisage hospitals across the nation with Accreta Inc. employees "registering patients, taking down sensitive health info and championing aggressive bill collection" even as sickly patients (mostly working class and middle class) lay groaning in the halls begging for help. Think it can't happen? Think again!
If health care is not a right, and by that I mean an affordable medium to access necessary medical treatment, then what Romney is really asserting is that 'Death IS your right!' Hence, playing into the screams of the Yahoos at one Tampa, FL Repug debate where Ron Paul was speaking and asked 'What's to become of them?' (meaning desperately sick people) and the animals, swine in the audience yelled, "Let them die!'
DO you wish a nation immersed in self-seeking swine? Then by all means vote Romney. He will deliver in ways that Herbert Spencer could have only imagined!
Lastly, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus defended Romney yesterday in an interview with CNN, blabbering:
"The point of all of this is the size of the government is too big and if we don't do something about it we're going to really lose the very idea of America,"
Well, how's about putting your money where your mouth is, Priebus, and laying off all those fat, juicy PORK BARREL defense contracts? You know, the ones you want earmarked for your Repug districts? If the "government" is too big, then it has to apply to YOUR interests in the government as well, and that means MILITARY spending! In any case, both you and Mitt need to read the Preamble of the Constitution again and especially the words enjoining government to PROMOTE THE GENERAL WELFARE!
For those who'd like to hear Keith Olbermann's response to Romney's codswallop:
http://www.salon.com/2012/09/18/finally_keith_olbermann_responds/
No comments:
Post a Comment