Partial Readings: The Political Season
Partial Readings: The Political Season
Partial Readings: The Political Season
The Political Economy of Plutocracy
Robert Reich presents a possible future, ten years hence, in which the demagogic tendencies of the Tea Party have developed into something terrible. He describes the ?confluence between economics, politics, and behavior? that could potentially give grounds to xenophobic populism: an ever-increasing pool of wealth at the top and a declining pool of wealth for the rest. ?While Americans have suffered economic reversals before, and the middle class has suffered relative deprivation, the years ahead are likely to mark the first time Americans will experience both together.? He?s unconvinced of his own story (??the American political system has shown a knack for stopping backlashes before they get out of hand?), but believes our fate lies in whether political ?reform will come this time on the scale that?s needed.?
Teaocracy in America
Once such enlightened interlopers as Alexis de Tocqueville and Jean de Crèvec?ur diagnosed the American character with skepticism and admiration. Promises of an agrarian utopia seemed plausible, democracy was flawed but shining with hope, average Americans read Shakespeare in their log cabins. Today, reporters across the globe have a new diagnosis for the American scene: “We don’t know if we feel more profound horror or more profound pity.” Foreign Policy,
in a new report on global perceptions of the Tea Party, reveals the dominant strains of analysis in Pakistan, Germany, China, France, and the Spanish-speaking world. An Argentinean correspondent traveled to Delaware to see how a woman who is “uneducated, unemployed, having a history of tax evasion, who used to practice witchcraft when she was young, who militantly fought masturbation, and who now defends creationism, could unseat the incumbent Republican.”
Beyond the understandable flabbergastery, there lurk fears about a flailing superpower, drunk on Tea. “According to [Pakistani newspaper] Dawn, the same ‘predatory instinct’ that led Americans to enslave Africans and wipe out Native Americans is ‘gathering mass, once again,’ this time with Muslims as the primary target.” And “according to China Daily, ‘China’s greatest danger is that US policymakers face economic and national security crises they cannot solve.'”
Speaking of China, that nation’s students are plotting against America from darkened, stadium-like lecture halls, where professors summon digital images with their fingertips à la Tom Cruise in Minority Report. It’s all a part of their sinister plan to dominate America via superior classroom technology, and also part of a campaign ad produced for “Citizens Against Government Waste” by the creator of the notorious 1988 “Willie Horton” ad. Salon presents this year’s most race-baiting ads; if you’ve ever worried about the many un-American languages in which driving tests are offered, or an unwelcome victory mosque being raised next door, or Mexican people in general, this is the collection for you.
