I think that the Republicans are TRYING to destroy the world. To this point, I had assumed that they were incompetent (in my less generous moments), or at least that they were so beholden to corporations, oil companies, and defense contractors that they were ruining the planet as a tragic of side effect of the pursuit of money and power. Now, I'm not so sure.
Let me 'splain:
Ecomonic Armageddon
In a previous post, I talked about the mammoth deficits that Bush was running up, and the precarious position in which it puts Social Security. I blamed Bush for being incompetent. Now I am beginning to suspect that he might have a touch of evil genius in him.
I think that Bush is trying to bankrupt the federal government, so that we will have no choice but to eliminate "big-goverment" entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. The tax cuts and deficit spending may be calculated to force us to abandon these programs.
I know what you're saying, and, for the record, the sources of information for this post are not my dog and the voices in my head. They are as follows:
In his address to the nation about the government shutdown in 1995, Bill Clinton was pretty explicit in saying that he thought that Gingrich and his cronies were intentionally trying to undermine social programs:
. . . the Republicans are following a very explicit strategy announced last April by Speaker Gingrich, to use the threat of a government shutdown to force America to accept their cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, to accept their cuts in education and technology and the environment.
Backing that up, NY Times columnist and Princeton Professor Paul Krugman wrote this in 2003:
It's no secret that right-wing ideologues want to abolish programs Americans take for granted. But not long ago, to suggest that the Bush administration's policies might actually be driven by those ideologues — that the administration was deliberately setting the country up for a fiscal crisis in which popular social programs could be sharply cut — was to be accused of spouting conspiracy theories.
Proposing to slash federal spending, particularly on social programs, is a tricky electoral proposition, but a fiscal crisis offers the tantalizing prospect of forcing such cuts through the back door.Even REPUBLICANS think that Bush is intentionally bankrupting the government to get rid of entitlements. Peter G. Peterson, Nixon's Commerce secretary, wrote in a 2003 article:
Makes an evil kind of sense I guess. If you were married and your spouse went out one day and bought a very expensive car against your wishes, and you were saving for, say, a new dinette set, you could get him/her to get rid of it by spending all of your savings and running up huge amounts of debt. Your spouse wouldn't be able to make the payments, and the car would be repossessed. Once you managed to get rid of the car, you could pay off the debt and make sure that the remainder of both of your salaries went into an account that you controlled, so you could spend it on your dinette set (If you could avoid absolute financial ruin and a divorce).For some Republicans, all this tax-cutting talk is a mere tactic. I know several brilliant and partisan Republicans who admit to me, in private, that much of what they say about taxes is of course not really true. But, they say, it's the only way to reduce government spending: chop revenue and trust that the Democrats, like Solomon, will agree to cut spending rather than punish our children by smothering them with debt.
This clever apologia would be more believable if Republicans — in all matters other than cutting the aggregate tax burden — were to speak loudly and act decisively in favor of deficit reductions. But it's hard to find the small-government argument persuasive when, on the spending front, the Republican leaders do nothing to reform entitlements, allow debt-service costs to rise along with the debt and urge greater spending on defense -- and when these three functions make up over four-fifths of all federal outlays.
An aggressive plan to be sure. Horribly tough on your credit rating (not to mention your marriage), but, if you played it right, you might just get what you want. That's the kind of a game of economic "chicken" that Bush is engaged in: ruining the US's finiancial standing in the world to get rid of some New Deal and Great Society programs that neo-conservatives find distasteful.
ACTUAL Armageddon
Alright. I'm writing this section while wearing my tinfoil hat. It has also been recently reported that Bush and Co. might not just be planning an "Economic Armageddon"--They might be actively working to create a REAL one.
Stay with me . . .
My partner-in-blog, SJ, brought some disturbing facts to my attention in her comments to this post:
It seems that some sects of evangelical Christians are firmly convinced that the end of the world is coming soon, and that this is the last generation of humans before the "rapture," when God will call the faithful to heaven, punish the "evil doers" and pretty much end the world. This story is told in the hugely popular Left Behind books, which have sold an astonishing 56 million copies (Please do not read this as an endorsement). SJ, noted that this idea has entered the mainstream, and many commentators (including Bill Moyers) are concerned that Republicans, and the evangelicals that elect them, are destroying the environment because, if the rapture is coming, why bother to preserve the earth for future generations?
*Shudder*
I'll add to that. If the rapture is coming, why not make it come a bit faster (waiting for Armageddon sucks) by starting unnecessary wars with Muslims, letting the Palestinians get clobbered by Israel, calling everyone we don't like "the Axis of Evil" and turning a blind eye as they acquire nuclear weapons. Everyone knows that there are "signs" in the book of revelation that indicate that the end is near. Why not create them? The ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy.
Before you call the men in white coats with the butterfly nets to come get me, I'm not the only one who thinks these things.
I urge you to read the Moyers lecture, he puts it pretty succinctly, and you should also read a great article that Moyers references by Glenn Scherer of Grist, that gives a basic history of the evangelical apocalyptic movement.
Friends, the end is nigh . . . If we can't stop these lunatics from ruining the world. I say, if they want to have their apocalypse, they should have the decency to have it somewhere where it won't bother us. I hear Mr. Bush is keen on Mars. That would be a great place to hold a rapture.
Tinfoil out
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