Robert Reich, Clinton’s former Secretary of the Treasury and champion of “afflicting the comfortable“, has painted a dark picture of an insidious and treasonous conspiracy to overthrow the government using almost discordian tactics:
“Imagine a plot to undermine the government of the United States, to destroy much of its capacity to do the public’s business, and to sow distrust among the population.
“Imagine further that the plotters infiltrate Congress and state governments, reshape their districts to give them disproportionate influence in Washington, and use the media to spread big lies about the government.
“Finally, imagine they not only paralyze the government but are on the verge of dismantling pieces of it.”
Who are these evil conspirators? According to Reich, it is the grassroots movement popularly known as the Tea Party. Reich conflates wanting to scale back the size and scope of the state from its current Leviathan incarnation, with an attempt to overthrow the entire government!
For example, many on the Right, including the Tea Party don’t want to “undermine” the Federal government, but rather restrict it to its enumerated functions. It is not the Right, but the divisive Left that pits the “99%” against the “1%” thus sowing distrust. They are not “infiltrating” Congress and state legislatures, but simply being elected; Reich here implies that conservatives do not have a proper place in Congress or in state legislatures, and that those are only the proper domain of those he agrees with. The media, for the most part, does indeed spread big lies about the government, but it is Obama’s and the left’s lies that are spread.
Reich goes on to spout paranoidly:
“Tea Partiers use fear and anger in their war against the government – blaming the anemic recovery on government deficits and the government’s size, and selling a poisonous snake-oil of austerity economics and trickle-down economics as the remedy.”
Yes. We are fearful of the direction of this country under people that Reich admires. We are angry at how lies are used to gorge the Leviathan, which exists for the benefit of the few.
Reich also ignores the fact that there is no austerity. Taxes have gone up. Spending continues to go up. Regulations continue to go up. These are all recipes for economic Depression. Real recover would require lowering all three of these factors, in order to unleash the creativity and genius of the American people.
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