Starving the beast

Paul Krugman has offered another scathing indictment of neo-conservatives and the Bush tax cuts.

There's really not much beyond this to add, except to reassert the gluttony of the über-rich who seek these tax cuts and the whorishness of the Republican leaders who pander to them.

The real question to be asked is: When are Americans, as a society, finally going to decide that giving up a little in taxes (I'm referring of course to an idealized world in which the working and middle classes pay much less, as opposed to the present state in which the rich pay an unjustly small portion of their income in taxes) is worth the bounty of public goods and services this country still refuses to guarantee for all its citizens?

I'm afraid the likely answer is not anytime soon, if ever. And yes, I realize I'm merely harping on a long-running theme and probably preaching to the choir. But it always bears repeating: it is inexcusable for the world's leading industrialized nation and largest economy to have people without healthcare; without quality, affordable education; without homes.

The fact of the matter is, a lot of other countries do it better. Maybe not in absolute terms of the quality of care or education or other aspects of life, but quantitatively, they at least manage to provide to everyone. Yet we here in the U.S. lack that sense of common humanity, of palpable concern for our fellow humans, let alone our fellow Americans. No, easier to save the rich a buck or million than to let poor babies get immunizations, adequate nutrition and decent education.

For all the conservatives and other folks who rant and rave about how abortion should be illegal, take a long, hard look at the facts before you start demanding that. Look, I don't care for abortion either. I find it unpleasant and wish no woman ever sought it. But that's a pipe dream. At least if you're going to insist that women who use abortion as a method of birth control -- the stereotypical young, unmarried, poor, minority woman -- give it up, do something to give their unborn child a fighting chance when he or she enters the world. You may think it's awful to not let that fetus reach term, but it's just as bad to force the mother to deliver her baby and stack all the odds against the child upon entry into the world.

But we couldn't do that. It'd cut into those tax breaks for the rich.

What neo-cons want to do is not "starve the beast," but to starve the poor and the middle class. Not literally. At least not the point of actual death by starvation. But to keep the poor at subsistence levels and the middle class just prosperous enough to keep consuming crap it doesn't need.

More and more, I just find myself frustrated and fed up with this country. There's so much wrong with it, so much to be discarded and abandoned and transformed. I wonder often what to do, or what can even be done. It doesn't seem particularly promising.

A revolution -- a real American revolution -- would be ideal. But frankly I don't foresee that happening without things becoming even more desperate and bleak. And even then, it seems doubtful.

Clearly something needs to be done to shake up the status quo, to arouse the masses and to empower the populace to take back their country, or to claim it for the first time.

I just don't have a lot of faith that the democratic process as presently constituted can achieve that. Sure, there are minor gains and advancements that can be made, but nothing ever truly transformative. By definition governments and the politicians who populate them are concerned with preservation and prolongment of their own power, not with forging revolutionary change, even through nonviolent, conventional methods. If it were true, then communism would be possible. And perhaps would've been realized. The Soviet Union may indeed have seen the withering away of the state after a period of development and the consolidation of socialism. But more likely not.

While it's certainly not impossible for individuals in positions of power to welcome and to foster such transformations, it's incredibly improbable. It would take a rare constellation of unique persons with a shared vision and selflessness to pull it off, but one so tenuous as to collapse under the slightest strain.

Perhaps I'm becoming exceedingly jaded and overly cynical. Perhaps I've fatalistically accepting Lord Acton's axiom about power and absolute power. But perhaps I've simply lived long enough and seen enough politicking to have peeked behind the curtain at the Wizard and to see the ugly machinations. I'm not sure.

What I do know is, I'm unwilling to accept things as they are. But I'm flummoxed on that point. How to make things better? How to slay the beast and prompt a phoenix-like resurrection from the ashes of civilization? I don't know.

I wish I had the answers. But then I think it'd be more perplexing or problematic if I did or thought I did.