Krugman: The 1 percent has created a monster

[n2doc]

In a post at his New York Times blog, the award-winning economist and columnist Paul Krugman argues that the right’s crusade against Obamacare is a byproduct of class antagonism and a radical right-wing movement that’s gone beyond the control of its hyper-wealthy benefactors.

Concerning the government shutdown over Obamacare, Krugman writes, “There’s a definite class-war aspect to this fight, pitting the interests of the 0.1 percent against those of lower-income families.” But according to Krugman, that doesn’t explain the whole story, because “the 0.1 percent, by and large, are pleading with the GOP to knock it off.” He then notes that even Karl Rove, “more or less the designated defender of upper-class privileges,” is complaining over not being listened to.

Ultimately, Krugman concludes, the radical right is like Frankenstein’s monster, with the hyper-wealthy playing the role of the doomed mad scientist. “[M]y working theory,” he writes, “is that wealthy individuals bought themselves a radical right party, believing … that it would cut their taxes and remove regulations.” What the .01 percent didn’t realize is that “eventually the craziness would take on a life of its own, and that the monster they created would turn on its creators as well as the little people.”

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/01/krugman_the_1_percents_created_a_monster/

[gopiscrap]

1. yes it sure has

[C_U_L8R]

2. I'm dubious

The GOP puppet masters are well in favor of everything the GOP is doing. This
Frankenstein monster backstory is a fairy tale for deniability. You can bet if
.01 percent wanted this to end we'd see a clean CR in minutes.

[roguevalley]

11. wall street is begging to no avail. they are out there showing themselves in

perilous begging. They have no control.

[C_U_L8R]

12. I think Wall Street needs to beg louder

And in more visible ways. Like on every editorial page and TV news show.

[bloomington-lib]

13. exactly

[truebluegreen]

23. As we get closer to debt limit default, they will.

Personally, I hope President Obama sidesteps their "help", invokes the 14th Amendment regarding the debt, and leaves the Republican Party fractured and bleeding...it wouldn't put an end to the nonsense, but it would be quite a kickoff for the 2014 election.

[grahamhgreen]

20. Agree.

[nxylas]

22. Fox News is actually defending Obamacare

It's the world turned upside-down.

[CTyankee]

28. Have you ever read Barbara Tuchman's "March of Folly"?

She writes about situations in history where unintended consequences take things to a disastrous end...kinda like what Krugman is suggesting here. She was writing that book during the Vietnam War and showing a pattern of what actually happened when folly and perversity took over in the instances of the Trojan War, the rule of the Renaissance Popes and the British loss of the North American colonies...and then the disaster in our Vietnam experience. I remember reading it at the time of its publication and being very impressed (and depressed) by her argument.

[Auggie]

3. Excellent post. Recommended.

[JEFF9K]

4. Krugman is always right. I'm not kidding.

[jsr]

14. Or very close to it.

[CTyankee]

29. I say that all the time...I've been reading Dr. K since he first started to write regularly at the

NY Times and often I wished that he would be wrong (particularly on his prediction about the real estate bubble). Sadly, he was right and he continues to be right.

[Agnosticsherbet]

5. When you lie repeatedly to people until they believe its the truth, you can't go back.

The wealthy created a false reality where Obamacare is a communist conspiracy and Democrats are socialists. Consevativism, as it now exists, is more a religion than a political philosophy. its followers are given holy writ that they must believe, even when it can be easily disproved.

It will continue to spin out of control until it flies apart, and something else will take its place.

[roamer65]

6. The 0.1 are now scared the rest of us are waking up and seeing the charade.

We are seeing Frank Zappa's "brick wall at the back of the theater". That equals either peaceful change or violent revolution as JFK once said.

[Scuba]

7. Bingo.

[Motown_Johnny]

8. I still think Karl Rove was Dr. Frankenstein in this story.

His "Deeper not Wider" approach to gaining enough votes for W to be "elected" purposefully targeted the extreme right wing and drew them into the electorate. They had been sitting out because Republicans were not conservative enough for them to bother voting.

Now the party depends on them and can't move back to the center. It is a death spiral. If they try to appeal to the center now they lose what has become their base and if they don't move to the center they eventually lose their standing as a national party. Add in the demographic shift which hangs over them like the Sword of Damocles and their gerrymandered districts and they have no viable long term options.

I think this shutdown was an attempt to establish a way for a minority party to still forward it's agenda. I am glad it isn't working. President Obama and his staff are ahead of them on this one and aren't going to let it happen.

[truebluegreen]

24. I hope Turd Blossom is really enjoying the fruits of his labor.

[Junkdrawer]

9. Told ya they should have stayed awake for The French Revolution classes....

Power Elites always create their own destructors....

....

But the royalists, instead of realizing the significance of these Jacobins with their dangerous integrity and their dangerous grip upon the imagination of the mob, had the conceit to think they could make tools of them. The time for the replacement of the National Assembly under the new-made constitution by the "Legislative Assembly" was drawing near; and when the Jacobins, with the idea of breaking up the moderates, proposed to make the members of the National Assembly ineligible for the Legislative Assembly, the royalists supported them with great glee, and carried the proposal. They perceived that the Legislative Assembly, so clipped of all experience, must certainly be a politically incompetent body. They would "extract good from the excess of evil," and presently France would fall back helpless into the hands of her legitimate masters. So they thought. And the royalists did more than this. They backed the election of a Jacobin as Mayor of Paris. It was about as clever as if a man brought home a hungry tiger to convince his wife of her need of him. There stood another body ready at hand with which these royalists did not reckon, far better equipped than the court to step in and take the place of an ineffective Legislative Assembly, and that was the strongly Jacobin Commune of Paris installed at the Hotel de Ville.

....

http://www.oldandsold.com/articles32n/history-line-60.shtml

[Bonhomme Richard]

10. I'm still waiting for them to turn on the 1%.

Not happening because these are the dumbest fuckers on the planet.

[abelenkpe]

21. Yep

And proud of their ignorance too.

[truebluegreen]

25. I wouldn't be so sure.

When Wall St and the big money boyz really start to rein them in, I think you may see an irrevocable split. It is true that they revere the "job creators", but at the same time they effing hate the elites, and they hated the bailouts. This situation has the potential to lay bare those differences.

As hard as it will be on government employees and all those who depend on them (that is, all of us, to a greater or lesser extent) this could be a very good thing for the country...and a great way to kick off the 2014 campaign.

Although many of us don't really care for the ACA on the basis that it is not progressive enough, it has one characteristic that is very powerful: it has the potential to show that the government can make a positive difference in people's lives. That's a knife in the heart of the Reagan revolution of "government isn't the solution, government is the problem."

If the Republicans want to run on their shutdown and against health care, let them.

[Snake Plissken]

15. Gee guys, we were only kidding, can we give back a few trillion to get rid of these freaks

please save us from the GOP Apocalypse freakshow we created

[Kennah]

16. It's Alive! IT'S ALIVE!

[DirkGently]

17. It is their monster. The "Gov't is Bad" Monster.

"Government is bad / can't do anything" is a marketing trope conservatives use when they want to get rid of things like regulation or environmental protection, or government services that compete with some business like mail delivery or retirement savings. Or when government is preventing them from doing something horrible they want to do to people, like enslave them or keep them from voting.

But these new guys, and the people voting them into office, just take "Bad Old Government" at face value. They actually think we should get rid of it. They're talking up just trying things with no federal government for a while.

Reminds me of creepy kid in my junior high school, who used to carry a knife. I heard him telling his friends once that you can "just stab someone in the stomach," and it wouldn't hurt them that badly. I wondered if any of them ever tried that theory out; ended up murdering someone in a playground fight.

Maybe they went to Congress instead.

[BillyRibs]

18. German Aristocratic/Corpratist thought

Thought they could control Hitler, Right up to when they couldn't.
Too late no take backs. You made your bed now we all have to lie in it.

[fasttense]

27. Exactly what I was thinking - they did the same thing when they created Hitler.

Or at least funded Hitler so Germany would NOT turn socialist and follow ideas spelled out by Marx.

The uber rich always create monsters that end up eating them too because they are stupid greedy men.

[bullwinkle428]

19. I want to see Grover Norquist running through the streets getting chased

like a greased pig, stripped to his BVDs. On second thought, scratch that!

K&R.

[jimlup]

26. spot on

[DCBob]

30. I think it all started with Sarah Palin.

She infected the ignorant masses with stupidity, fear and anger... a dangerous combination.

[mulsh]

31. I think it started with Karl Rove, I blame him for the advent of teabaggers.

Damn few repubs were critical of the sleazy tactics Rove employed. Remarkably Bush the elder was one of the few who did. I think teabaggers are a natural result of letting Rove rampage freely in the political arena. Now that the greater moster if free they're begining to have some regrets, even KKKarl.