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September 30, 2008

"The Shopkeeper Fascist Fantasy"

A scathing comment over on Nouriel Roubini's RGE Monitor blog that is sure to provoke some strong feelings:

It's amazing how many people, including some on this blog, are totally misreading the situation.

The House Republicans fear socialism, even this "socialism for the rich", more than collapse of the economy. They are mostly well-trained rabble, pious schoolchildren, who sincerely believe the free-market ideology that led to this disaster in the first place. They have been more than happy with handouts to the rich for decades! But their deep fear of anything non-capitalist has brought them to total absurdity: they want bankrupt businesses to buy government insurance and to escape capital gains tax, even though these businesses obviously have no revenue!

Do any of them understand that the day-to-day operations of the US government and military are totally in the hands of foreign rival creditors? We can and should hate Paulson but at least that lying miser understands the stakes for US capitalism and world power. The "no" vote is a sign of deterioration not "victory for the people."

Do these small minded rightist fools understand BWII, the international flow of funds, the organization of world trade, etc.? Do they understand the link between the military, petrodollars, bonds, and export-led growth? OF COURSE NOT. They just want their small minded and frankly shopkeeper fascist fantasy that they too can one day get rich.

But US capitalism has happily cultivated these Panglossian delusions for decades, if not two centuries, because it has helped them repress various domestic untermenschen. So the US deserves such self-destructive stupidity. It is the economic equivalent of falling on your own sword.

Okay, I'll confess to an abiding weakness for this sort of outburst now and then.

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