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The words do not have to be perfect.

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Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

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You are here: Home / We’re Already in a Class War

We’re Already in a Class War

by Freddie deBoer|  June 13, 201212:53 pm| 86 Comments

This post is in: Decline and Fall, Our Failed Media Experiment

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Having read neither of the books themselves, I can’t say whether I agree with Felix Salmon’s review of Paul Krugman and Timothy Noah’s recent books as a review. But it’s always nice to see someone who is willing to name, in a national publication, the essential problem for our country: capture of our resources and our government by the very rich.

Rich people have more power than poor people, and they use that power to get what they want — which is, normally, more wealth and more power. Across America, politicians invariably reflect the views of their richest constituents. And the Federal Reserve, too, appears to have been captured by the rich: It seems much more worried about the specter of possible future inflation (which might be bad for the rich) than it is about the tragedy of present-day unemployment (which is calamitous for today’s jobless)…. This is now a country run by the rich, for the rich. And nothing in either of these books gives me reason to believe that there’s any hope of changing that.

Very stark, very true, very necessary.

At some point, the Very Serious people got together and decided that there are never legitimate conflicts between different economic classes. They therefore dismiss any discussion that operates on the assumption of such conflict as “partisan,” “populist,” “unserious,” etc. To my great dismay, many of the vaguely leftish wonky types who were once an alternative to the Very Serious crowd have simply become Seriouser and Seriouser as time has gone on, and in doing so have accepted this big lie that we can fix our current problems without privileging the needs of the lower classes against the desires of the top class.

For example, contrast Salmon’s piece with  this review of the movie Inside Job by Ezra Klein, which I feel is one of the more wrong-headed pieces I’ve read. (I’m not alone.) Klein disliked the movie because the supposed lesson to take from the financial crisis was not that our financial system was out of control, or that the greed and excess that animates it damage our country, or that a small group of fantastically wealthy, accountability-free plutocrats destroyed the economy and caused abject human misery for millions. No, the lesson to take from the financial crisis, according to Klein, is that life is complex and people are only human, and, you know, liberals are know-it-alls.

I think there’s a very stark choice to be made between talking like Klein or talking like Salmon, and I think it matters. The problem is that talking like Klein is probably more conducive to a prominent career in journalism.

We’re  facing a very essential question: when one group of people has captured the system, do we have what it takes to take it back? Like Salmon, I’m rather pessimistic.  But we can’t possibly succeed unless we acknowledge that there is a real conflict here, a class conflict. Many i our media believe the rosy, destructive lie that what’s good for the top is always good for those on the bottom. Books like Krugman’s and Noah’s attempt to rebut that idea, empirically, and demonstrate that when one group takes such an enormous percentage of wealth, the inevitable result is stagnancy and malaise for the rest of us. We need more people speaking like Salmon, in frank terms about the grasp the rich have on our political system. The  interests of a tiny group are in direct conflict with the interests of the large majority; that’s reality.  To fix our country, you’ve got to speak plainly, and angrily, about it.

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Reader Interactions

86Comments

  1. 1.

    BGinCHI

    June 13, 2012 at 12:59 pm

    Maybe the left will learn to fight back in my lifetime. Let’s hope the John Kerry presidential run was the low point of left politics in this country.

    I sure as fuck hope so.

    Time to resurrect the aggressive left populism of the 1930s.

  2. 2.

    Tod Kelly

    June 13, 2012 at 1:12 pm

    I agree with everything you say Freddie, and want to ask of those that have a better handle on these things than I do: I have a sense that this is not a new thing, but that it’s always been this way here (and maybe everywhere else?). Am I right? If not, where do we look in the past to model from? If I am right, how do we actually create something out of whole cloth that actually sticks?

  3. 3.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    June 13, 2012 at 1:15 pm

    Time to resurrect the aggressive left populism of the 1930s.

    @BGinCHI: Not happening here. I wish otherwise. The left’s insistence on losing tactics, civilized discourse, and keeping to the high road is a great strategy for a dinner party.

    Not so good for winning elections. Desperate people – and I think that describes most of the electorate these days – do not flock to someone who promises a civilized discussion of the issues and acting with restraint. They want someone blamed and they want somebody’s blood.

    The party that is offering that these days – aggressive populism, as you so beautifully put it – is not the Democrats.

  4. 4.

    Corner Stone

    June 13, 2012 at 1:20 pm

    @Forum Transmitted Disease:

    Desperate people – and I think that describes most of the electorate these days – do not flock to someone who promises a civilized discussion of the issues and acting with restraint.

    How do you square this with Obama’s election, and possible re-election?

  5. 5.

    eemom

    June 13, 2012 at 1:27 pm

    Well, I’ll give you this: you’re getting better at stating the obvious. Keep up the momentum and you’ll hit mediocrity any day now.

  6. 6.

    Maude

    June 13, 2012 at 1:28 pm

    The solution is for people to vote in large numbers.
    Vote have more power than money.
    Congress responds to what gets them back into office.
    If there are enough voters fed up with the 1% and they vote, Congress will be more afraid of them then losing the palm greasers.

  7. 7.

    Hill Dweller

    June 13, 2012 at 1:28 pm

    @Corner Stone: That experiment lasted about a year. People abandoned him almost immediately.

    As for reelection, he has a 50/50 chance, at best, of winning.

  8. 8.

    Citizen Alan

    June 13, 2012 at 1:29 pm

    @Corner Stone:

    How do you square this with Obama’s election, and possible re-election?

    It helped that Obama was up against possibly the worst GOP nominee since Barry Goldwater AND we were coming off eight years of utterly disastrous GOP rule led by the most disliked GOP President since Hoover. And he STILL only won 53-47. And he’s only narrowly ahead of a GOP nominee who has a reputation for total dishonesty, who openly states his intention to favor the rich over everyone else, who is a member of a religious minority condemned as a satanic cult by the Religious Right, and whose sole experience with governing was a complete disaster EXCEPT for the health care plan that he now thinks is unconstitutional.

  9. 9.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    June 13, 2012 at 1:34 pm

    How do you square this with Obama’s election, and possible re-election?

    With Obama’s election? Twofold: One, the GOPs name was shit because of W. Two, the shit hit the fan right at the end of the campaign, remember? Timing helped Obama a great deal, shoved him over the line IMO, as the collapse was the cherry on the shit cake of the Bush era.

    Desperation set in later, as it became obvious that this wasn’t going to be a little dip in the economy. Hence the disaster that was the 2010 election. The people who were the big winners in that contest were the people I describe – faux far-right populists who did nothing but literally scream about the evils of big guvmint and the Negro gangbanger in the White House.

    As to his re-election (which I consider a done deal, BTW) – Romney can’t give the GOP what they want, pure and simple. If the GOP had nominated a populist (Perry not on meds would have been ideal, for them), it would all be over but the voting and we’d be discussing our dismal prospects for regaining the White House in 2016, I’m betting.

  10. 10.

    Napoleon

    June 13, 2012 at 1:36 pm

    The problem is that talking like Klein is probably more conducive to a prominent career in journalism.

    No doubt this is true, but having said that I suspect Salmon is around for the long haul. He is going to be able to “get away with” saying stuff like this.

  11. 11.

    Bmaccnm

    June 13, 2012 at 1:37 pm

    @eemom: Do you have anything to contribute?

  12. 12.

    catclub

    June 13, 2012 at 1:41 pm

    @Forum Transmitted Disease: “Desperate people – and I think that describes most of the electorate these days – do not flock to someone who promises a civilized discussion of the issues and acting with restraint.”

    I will note that I am mostly separate from the desperate.
    But the impression I have is that the safety net improvements that came during the great depression have made the actual _desperate_ population smaller. let me adjust that, the portion of the population that is both desperate and still influential in some way, seems smaller.

    In the great depression we had 25% unemployment AND mass migrations of people who were searching for FOOD. Either we do not have those now, or they are better covered up now.

    I think there are grades of desperation between: ‘I can see my kids having no real future’
    and ‘My kids have nothing to eat.’

  13. 13.

    Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor

    June 13, 2012 at 1:46 pm

    The politicians, the MOTU, the VSP, and the big players in MSM are all in the same social class. Anyone outside the Club is invisible, unless needed as a prop for a talking point.

    So, of course, none of them “sees” class warfare. Anymore than an 18th cent. aristocrat could “see” or recognize the servants swarming around their tables as fully human.

    I used to read pandagon.net back in 2004. It’s been kind of tragic, seeing Ezra’s slow (but probably inexorable) transformation from pro-Edwards blogger kid, to wonky but reality-based health care wunderkind, to (essentially) just a smarter version of Luke Russert.

  14. 14.

    catclub

    June 13, 2012 at 1:47 pm

    @Forum Transmitted Disease:”If the GOP had nominated a populist (Perry not on meds would have been ideal, for them), it would all be over but the voting and we’d be discussing our dismal prospects for regaining the White House in 2016, I’m betting. ”

    Well, Newt is smart enough to play the populist if it is working. He tried, (remember HIS anti-Bain ad?) and THEN he really got clobbered by the big money, plus all the party big guns.

    There is really no way for a populist to run as a republican and get any funding. Huckabee was close, also, and again, totally shut out of the money/ big guns support
    in 2008.

  15. 15.

    terraformer

    June 13, 2012 at 1:57 pm

    The French Revolution called to say, “we’ve been through this before.”

  16. 16.

    Davis X. Machina

    June 13, 2012 at 2:00 pm

    @BGinCHI: The low point of left politics was Clinton’s second term. Kerry’s problems were campaign-related, and instrumental, not goal-related.

  17. 17.

    Davis X. Machina

    June 13, 2012 at 2:02 pm

    @catclub: There is really no way for a populist to run as a republican and get any funding.

    Lilly-white populism could still do very well. The populist tradition has from time to time depended on a very narrow definition of ‘the people’….

  18. 18.

    liberal

    June 13, 2012 at 2:04 pm

    @Tod Kelly:

    I have a sense that this is not a new thing, but that it’s always been this way here (and maybe everywhere else?).

    “All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” — Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

  19. 19.

    third of two

    June 13, 2012 at 2:07 pm

    I quit reading Ezra a couple of years back, after having spent the time before that (with not a little resignation and disappointment) watching him morph from a liberal wonk into an establishment pundit bent on defending the status quo.

    I think there’s a very stark choice to be made between talking like Klein or talking like Salmon, and I think it matters. The problem is that talking like Klein is probably more conducive to a prominent career in journalism.

    Correctamundo.

  20. 20.

    Yossarian

    June 13, 2012 at 2:07 pm

    That’s a massively unfair take on what Ezra Klein was trying to say.

  21. 21.

    John Cole

    June 13, 2012 at 2:09 pm

    @eemom:

    And don’t bother about the principal—he just runs in the other direction when he sees me coming.

    I just banned you. Who’s running away now, asshole?

  22. 22.

    Maude

    June 13, 2012 at 2:10 pm

    @Davis X. Machina:
    I thought Kerry lost when he didn’t get ahead of the swift boating. It may have made him look weak.
    I despise Clinton, so I’ll leave that alone.

  23. 23.

    Tom Q

    June 13, 2012 at 2:11 pm

    @Citizen Alan: This is a ridiculous re-write of 2008. John McCain, who had huge favorables among members of both parties (not to mention the media) the worst candidate since Goldwater? Come on. The other part of your contention — that Bush’s hideous second term was the culprit — is perfectly true (just as Carter’s disastrous four years paved the way for Reagan). But I don’t know why you try to diminish a 7.25% percent margin. That’s barely short of Bush I over Dukakis, which most people think of as a wipeout. And Obama’s victory came in the teeth of the country’s deepest prejudice, which has been well shown to have pared his margins throughout the Appalachian Valley.

    I think Desperation is more a factor in midternms, where disparities in turnout can skew the outcome severely. I think presidential elections are more rational; I see Obama winning comfortably in November, with Dems making gains in the House and holding the Senate.

    And, really — desperation? There’s an awful lot of hyperbole out there today. The recent jobs report was disappointing, of course, but people screaming “dismal” and “catastophic” about a 69,000 job GAIN (after multiple months of 100-200,000 improvements) make you wonder what adjectives they’d trot out for an actual monthly loss.

  24. 24.

    Maude

    June 13, 2012 at 2:11 pm

    @John Cole:
    Wow. You’re a mensch.

  25. 25.

    Corner Stone

    June 13, 2012 at 2:12 pm

    I guess I’m left wondering who EK’s target audience is now. Bobo isn’t going anywhere for a while.
    I guess steady paychecks are the easy answer.

  26. 26.

    SatanicPanic

    June 13, 2012 at 2:12 pm

    @John Cole: Haha, classic

  27. 27.

    Corner Stone

    June 13, 2012 at 2:13 pm

    @John Cole: Wow.

  28. 28.

    ChrisB

    June 13, 2012 at 2:17 pm

    As to whether this country is now run by the rich for the rich, that’s pretty much how it’s always been. It is that way now, and it obviously was that way during the late 19th century robber baron era and in the “business of America is business” years before the Great Depression. But it was also the case during the American Revolution and Federalist era and even during the New Deal, when despite the enmity of America’s plutocrats FDR went about saving capitalism instead of destroying it.

    Examples of policies that truly damaged the interests of the wealthy are few and far between: a little trust busting here, some regulations addressing the worst workplace and tenement conditions there (including childhood labot and minimum wage laws), a few environmental restrictions on the side.

    It’s not that the left doesn’t fight, it’s that they don’t often win. Just ask William Jennings Bryan and Eugene V. Debs.

  29. 29.

    beltane

    June 13, 2012 at 2:23 pm

    @Davis X. Machina: The Republican party has been very successful in persuading white working class Americans that they are the ubermenschen, the rightful and natural owners of our society, thwarted only by the black and brown loving liberals in the Democratic party. Disabusing the Republican base of this deeply entrenched belief is, I think, an impossible task. Unfortunately, the only way left populism will really succeed is by isolating and scapegoating these people, not by winning them over. While demographic changes will make this tactic increasingly possible over the next few decades, such divide and conquer tactics are not compatible with true liberalism. In other words, we might see the rise of left populism but it will not be liberal in nature-Hugo Chavez and not FDR.

  30. 30.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    June 13, 2012 at 2:27 pm

    @John Cole: lol

  31. 31.

    John Emerson

    June 13, 2012 at 2:30 pm

    At some point, the Very Serious people got together and decided that there are never legitimate conflicts between different economic classes. They therefore dismiss any discussion that operates on the assumption of such conflict as “partisan,” “populist,” “unserious,” etc.

    This isn’t recent. It goes back to 1948 or so when the Progressive Party was crushed. Around that time the so-called “consensus theorists” claimed that class conflict was a thing of the past, if there ever was any at all. Hofstadter, Schlesinger, Daniel Bell, Shils, Niebuhr, and JK Galbraith.

    These were the teachers of the Democratic intelligentsia. There was a lot of rank and file class consciousness, but it dwindled as the unions were destroyed (which also started in the 50s, with Democratic help).

    And the lifestyle talk started then too. U and non-U, high middle and low brow, etc., with a lot of hostility to the average man and popular culture.

  32. 32.

    catclub

    June 13, 2012 at 2:33 pm

    @Davis X. Machina: “Lilly-white populism could still do very well.”

    My post said Newt tried and failed. If his is not lily white populism, I don’t know who is. David Duke? Also not a notable success.

  33. 33.

    Corner Stone

    June 13, 2012 at 2:36 pm

    @Forum Transmitted Disease:

    Hence the disaster that was the 2010 election.

    IMO, people were much more afraid in late 2008 and early 2009 than they were in elections of 2010. You had elected officials coming out of locked meetings and telling people Hank Paulson was shitting his pants and that Klaatu was waiting in the hall closet for his cue to come out and do a presser Q&A.
    IMO, the 2010 debacle should be laid pretty easily on a massive and epic scale of failure to message the ACA. On every level. From scared representatives all the way to Obama’s inherent team.

  34. 34.

    slim's tuna provider

    June 13, 2012 at 2:36 pm

    so you support a salmon article that basically throws up its hands at the problem, which supports krugman and noah books that salmon criticizes for not offering any solutions, but when ezra klein says that the problems are complex, he’s a traitor? i’m not sure that refutes the know it all charge.

  35. 35.

    Davis X. Machina

    June 13, 2012 at 2:37 pm

    @catclub: You’d need a not-silly figurehead. No one without a history of traumatic brain injury is going to confuse Newt Gingrich and Huey Long, or even George Wallace, or, come to that, the Newt Gingrich of 1995-98

  36. 36.

    Gex

    June 13, 2012 at 2:38 pm

    The white working class largely does not realize that there has been capture of government by a group they do not belong to. They know something’s wrong, they think they are in the in group and they know all the problems come from the out groups.

    In fact, this is a pretty short summary of a lot of America’s history.

  37. 37.

    sparky

    June 13, 2012 at 2:38 pm

    To fix our country, you’ve got to speak plainly, and angrily, about it.

    yes, but….

    it is well-nigh impossible to do that from inside any major institution, and this includes political parties, which after all are creatures of interests, unless you have a position that is insulated/have no greasy pole type ambitions. thus, outside may be the way to go for the disenfranchised who don’t have much to lose.

    @beltane: interesting point–assuming the “left” gets any traction, will it do so as an autocracy or as a genuine grass-roots movement?

  38. 38.

    Michael2

    June 13, 2012 at 2:39 pm

    We are *NOW* in a class war?? People, this country was *FOUNDED* on class warfare! Read the _Federalist Papers_, where property rights are given especial power amongst the various “factions.” And since it has been industrially relevant, all kinds of folks have been pointing out the inconvenient fact that the rich run this country for the rich.

    David Graham Phillips in _The Treason of the Senate_, Henry Demarest Lloyd (_Wealth Against Commonwealth_)in the late 1800s/early 1900s; the famous Beard book _An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution_ specifically pointed to powerful forces written into the Constitution to privilege economic interests (thus the importance for anti-Federalists of the Bill of Rights – and yes Beard’s thesis has been pretty effectively critiqued, but there IS some fire behind all that smoke). FDR’s awesome speech before the election in 1936 referred to “the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering” and he wasn’t bullshitting.

    So, I guess, Welcome to the Party? Glad to have you along? Where have you been? Still, any new ideas and supporters are welcome – the Old Enemies of Peace know what they’re doing.

  39. 39.

    Corner Stone

    June 13, 2012 at 2:39 pm

    @Corner Stone: Fucking WP. I wanted to edit the previous and say “economically afraid” in 2008. Of course old people were motivated to vote in 2010 by fear of losing health care, but the general economic sense was much more palpable in 2008, IMO.
    FYWP.

  40. 40.

    Davis X. Machina

    June 13, 2012 at 2:48 pm

    FDR’s awesome speech before the election in 1936 referred to “the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering” and he wasn’t bullshitting.

    He was in fact bullshitting if that’s the ’36 Halloween speech, the one where FDR basically said “I welcome their hatred” but then acted as if he accepted their assessment of the macro-economic situation, took his foot off the gas, and watched the country slide back into a second dip of the Depression.

    Not even FDR was “FDR”…. and you have to watch what presidents do, not what they say. Then, and now.

  41. 41.

    Clean Willie

    June 13, 2012 at 2:49 pm

    Thanks, Freddie, for every word of this piece.

  42. 42.

    flukebucket

    June 13, 2012 at 2:51 pm

    @John Cole:

    Damn I am glad I was here to see this. It made my day.

  43. 43.

    Heliopause

    June 13, 2012 at 2:58 pm

    We’re facing a very essential question: when one group of people has captured the system, do we have what it takes to take it back?

    We never had it and never will. What is possible is a return of the New Deal and Great Society dynamics; scare the hell out of the plutocracy to the extent that they introduce meaningful reforms out of an instinct of sheer self-preservation. Entitlements, civil rights, equal rights, environmental awareness, and so on are examples of the plutocracy reforming itself (in reaction to social pressures) in order to keep the society governable. A similar dynamic seems to be the best we can hope for, though it’s not immediately on the horizon.

    The inevitable backlash to the reforms of the 60s and 70s has been accelerating, as I hardly need tell all of you. Sadly, current Democratic leadership is far too gutless to see through the deep reform agenda needed to prevent the health care system, the financialized economy, the overseas Empire, and runaway environmental problems from destroying us. Incremental reforms are better than nothing, I suppose, but the train is still headed for the cliff and all we’re doing is slowing it down a bit. Sorry to be a bummer.

  44. 44.

    catclub

    June 13, 2012 at 2:59 pm

    @Davis X. Machina: If you also need him to ride a rainbow unicorn, that cuts the field down, too.

    I keep listing possibles: Newt, Huckabee, David Duke, who have tried lily white populism and have all been smacked down
    extremely hard by the money and establishment of the GOP.

    My point remains, there is ZERO visible support for actual populism in the GOP. All the Teaparty elected congressmen are owned by the banks they claimed ( for about two seconds, until they were told where their money was coming from) to hate.

  45. 45.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    June 13, 2012 at 3:06 pm

    @Tod Kelly:

    I have a sense that this is not a new thing, but that it’s always been this way here (and maybe everywhere else?). Am I right? If not, where do we look in the past to model from? If I am right, how do we actually create something out of whole cloth that actually sticks?

    __
    My basic sense is that the answer to this question is not pretty. Progressive reform movements have been most successful in our past when they were pushed as the alternative to violent anti-capitalist political movements, whether black (anarchist) or red (soshulist), which enjoyed real popular support and which threatened the very lives of the truly wealthy, in non-trivial numbers. In other words you are pushing a rock up a hill trying to get established institutions which have been captured by the wealthy to permit progressivism until things are so bad that a sufficiently large number of truly desperate and angry people are willing to put their bodies and their families on the line in order to kill the rich, knowing that they will die trying.
    __
    What a movement like that would look like today, armed not with the crude weapons of the late 19th and early 20th Century, but with every instrument of violence and terror that the 21st Century has to offer, that would make a fine dystopian science fiction novel. I’d prefer not to live in it, myself.

  46. 46.

    mai naem

    June 13, 2012 at 3:07 pm

    @Corner Stone: The Dems would have won if they had put up Bernie Sanders as their candidate. Mr.Get Off Ma Lawn and Princess WordSalad of the Northwoods did not exactly come across as qualified for the highest office in the land(long form birth certificate not withstanding.)

    And no, things are not going to change because Americans are 1/stoopid 2/have short memories 3/lazy 4/have the attention span of a hummingbird 5/worry too much about how the gay/black/hispanic/mooslim/chinese/asian/furriner neighbors are doing socially and financially and therefore divide and conquer is easy pickings for Rmoney.

  47. 47.

    Powdermonkey

    June 13, 2012 at 3:20 pm

    You guys ever seen one of those Mythbusters episodes where they turn a water heater into a bomb?

    Imagine the Economy of the US as the water heater with a constant source of heat. The safety interlocks and pressure valves are things like the New Deal, business regulation, societal norms and the Great Society reforms.
    The rich get richer (more hot water) faster if they remove some of the safety features, but the possibility of failure goes up. So some of them over time, not thinking ahead, remove a safety interlock, turn up the heat and start to wire up the pressure valves.

    Now there are some groups who want to increase the safety factors: progressive/liberals, smart rich people,the middle class, Ect. They see a working system where everyone gets the hot water a little slower and split up a little more equitably as better than a broken system and they work to put back in those interlocks, add some more pressure valves, and turn down the heat a little.

    This can go on for years, decades or even longer, But no matter how hard you try there will always be a failure, the only question is what the outcome is. Will it be a recoverable one where one of the pressure valve works and we just have to replace it with another? or will it be a total explosion resulting in the destruction of not only the water heater, but the house and the people living in it?

    The only question is when the water is already boiling and the pressure is starting to get into the red zone, are there enough people in the “safety” camp to change direction before the explosion.

    I sure as shit hope so, because no one wins the other way.

  48. 48.

    BGinCHI

    June 13, 2012 at 3:26 pm

    @Powdermonkey: That’s a nice analogy, and spot on.

    The one I often use is a car. The capitalists want all horsepower but no brakes. The government provides the brakes and all the maintenance (insurance, a parking spot, license, etc.).

    Brakes are not sexy or liable to be featured in a beer commercial, but without them you crash.

  49. 49.

    Ruckus

    June 13, 2012 at 3:32 pm

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
    And law enforcement is much better armed. The military is much better armed. How much of that would be turned on the citizens may be an open question but not in my opinion. Lots and lots of people would die. You probably would not have much choice about that living in it or through it.
    A national strike would make much more sense in our modern world. And I don’t see that having a snowball’s chance in darth’s retirement community.

  50. 50.

    gelfling545

    June 13, 2012 at 3:39 pm

    @John Cole: Thank you. It is an unfortunate fact that various posts here have become well nigh unreadable with certain people spewing their off topic ad hominem nonsense.
    Note: spell check wants me to change that to Eminem

  51. 51.

    Ruckus

    June 13, 2012 at 3:44 pm

    @Powdermonkey:
    are there enough people in the “safety” camp to change direction before the explosion.

    Not with too big to fail. Which is the same as too rich to fail. Trump has been bankrupt how many times? How many times could you go bankrupt and come out [smelling(OK he doesn’t pass any kind of smell test except the one for the person who smells the most like shit)] better than just survival?

  52. 52.

    Waldo

    June 13, 2012 at 3:45 pm

    @BGinCHI: That works, too. More generally, “The Tragedy of the Commons” also applies.

  53. 53.

    SiubhanDuinne

    June 13, 2012 at 4:05 pm

    Class warfare? Well, breaking at WaPo, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has just donated $10 million to Rmoney’s SuperPAC. He defended his decision by saying, and I quote: “I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections. But as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it.”

    ETA: Apparently that quote is from March 2012 when he was busy donating to Newt’s campaign. WaPo flagged it on their today’s breaking page, though.

  54. 54.

    SiubhanDuinne

    June 13, 2012 at 4:10 pm

    Oops, forgot that I’m not allowed to say how Sheldon Adelson made his money. Let’s try again:

    Class warfare? Well, breaking at WaPo, ca$1n0 mogul Sheldon Adelson has just donated $10 million to Rmoney’s SuperPAC. He defended his decision by saying, and I quote: “I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections. But as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it.”

    ETA: Apparently that quote is from March 2012 when he was busy donating to Newt’s campaign. WaPo flagged it on their today’s breaking page, though.

  55. 55.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    June 13, 2012 at 4:14 pm

    @Ruckus:

    And law enforcement is much better armed. The military is much better armed. How much of that would be turned on the citizens may be an open question but not in my opinion.

    __
    I’m of the opinion that the more forward looking architects of the GWOT circa 2002+ put together our “Homeland Security” and associated surveilance state apparatus with this contingency in mind. In public they may have talked a lot about radical Islamic extremism coming from outside but it was really intended all along as a means of dealing with increasingly desperate and violent domestic dissent.

  56. 56.

    Unsympathetic

    June 13, 2012 at 4:22 pm

    The act of asserting liberals are “know-it-alls” is very Rovian of them, and I refuse to accept that label. If liberals are “know-it-alls” then conservatives are Know-Nothings. The irony is that every single time someone bothers to be empirical in their thinking about a problem – figure out what the correct data is, and only then bother to come up with a conclusion – that conclusion [policy, bill, etc] is “liberal.”

    Republican thought is a fun mix of magical [I wish this to be so, and so it is!] and bizarre social peer pressure [Anyone who doesn’t want to cut Social Security is a BAD PERSON!] ultimately signifying nothing.

    The greatest obstacle to calm, rational, evidence-based thinking about human nature, is human nature.

  57. 57.

    Omnes Omnibus

    June 13, 2012 at 4:25 pm

    @John Cole: Seems awfully harsh for a metaphor. It wasn’t racial or sexist. Did you really just ban someone for pissing you off?

  58. 58.

    danah gaz (fka gaz)

    June 13, 2012 at 4:32 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Did you really just ban someone for pissing you everyone off and consistently bringing NOTHING to any given discussion on any given topic?

    FTFY

  59. 59.

    Michael2

    June 13, 2012 at 4:33 pm

    @Davis X. Machina: It _was_ the Halloween speech. And I disagree. What made FDR unique was his ability to perceive class interests in a (modestly) egalitarian way. Don’t forget, this is the same president who succeeded in redefining the qualities of universal “freedom” by adding material security to religion, fear, and thought, and then tried to utilize mass-consumer power to propel economic growth. And those ARE acts, not just words. If he was so shifty and duplicitous, why is the GOP so intent on repudiating everything he accomplished for economic justice???

    The “double-dip” recession wasn’t only about buying into the corporatist macro-economic vision; it was about ‘gee this is working well, we can cut back because EEK DEFICITS!’ along with a reaction to the Court packing scheme, and the belief that “we’ve done enough” to balance economic competition (with SSA and NLRA). And as you suggest, it was also certainly about not going _far enough_. And _The General Theory_ wasn’t published until 1936, and although the dudes in the Brains Trust were familiar with it, FDR’s cabinet is I think well-known for being contentious between competing philosophies (he seemed to thrive on that chaos). The alternatives were only dimly understood, I would say. But I understand his populism to be pretty genuine. So I respectfully disagree that he was bullshitting.

    All this is not to say FDR was perfect and we await his Second Coming like the TeaTards do with Saint Ronnie. I’m perfectly aware of his shortcomings and varieties of historical interpretations of his legacies and lives – that’s what comes with advanced degrees. (And very little else, btw.) But his revulsion for the plutocrats was, for a man of his economic position, at least, pretty genuine.

    But the OTHER Roosevelt was the wiser – TR made the distinction between people who acted fairly in economic competition and people who did not. As a policy measure, that’s why some trusts were broken up, and others (e.g. USSteel) were provided opportunities to self-reform. _Not all rich people are evil and not all wealthy want to fuck over the poor_. But the issue of fairness, of having the tools to defend ourselves in an economic competition (collective bargaining, legal protections from employer actions, etc.) IS the issue. I would argue FDR understood that, and that his choice of sides in the class struggle was clear, and sincere.

  60. 60.

    danah gaz (fka gaz)

    June 13, 2012 at 4:38 pm

    I can sum up American conservatives fairly succinctly, but it wouldn’t sell any books.

    Authority über alles
    ergo:
    Party über alles

    Reality, decency, country? Fuck em’ They take a backseat to the above tenets

  61. 61.

    Omnes Omnibus

    June 13, 2012 at 4:44 pm

    @danah gaz (fka gaz): I disagree with your fix. She has been particularly pissed since the cavalier dismissal by Cole and others of any legal analysis of the Supreme Court that did not begin and end with right wing legal hacks. She also has the diplomatic skills and instincts of a charging rhino. That being said, she isn’t a troll. She wasn’t racist or sexist here, so I don’t see why she is gone. YMMV.

  62. 62.

    Jado

    June 13, 2012 at 4:46 pm

    @catclub:

    But when you get used to the progress of the US economy, where from the 50s on things seemed to go up and up and up, and the safety nets instituted could prevent the “my kids have nothing to eat” scenario, then the spectre of “my kids having no real future” can be terrifying.

    Especially when we realize that it didn’t HAVE to be this way. That it was made this way as a side effect of policies that no one in power cared enough to forestall.

    Our kids are now considered “collateral damage”. Eggs and omelettes, don’t you know.

    “It’s a real shame, but it had to be done.”
    “Right. I mean, no one can be expected to just allow a pension fund to SIT there. Capital has to be used.”
    “Exactly. Too bad it was used to purchase CDOs of toxic mortgages, and I did get the commission and a fat bonus out of it, but I just did what the client requested.”
    “Sure. They ASKED us to do it. Everyone knew the market was going to keep going up. No one could have known that housing was going to implode.”
    “Well, no one except Michael Burry.”
    “Hah! Yeah, that’s a good one. Well, I gotta go, my limo’s here.”
    “Okay. See you Saturday at the Club.”

  63. 63.

    Tod Kelly

    June 13, 2012 at 4:55 pm

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

    Wow. That is indeed not pretty at all.

  64. 64.

    Maude

    June 13, 2012 at 5:05 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    I think it was meanness that got her ousted.
    Not just today.
    Then again, I could be wrong.

  65. 65.

    negative 1

    June 13, 2012 at 5:06 pm

    Sadly historically these things have not really ever been accomplished without a full-out revolution. You can’t really argue someone out of their own self-interest. I guess maybe the New Deal? I can’t think of any others off of the top of my head. Can anyone else?

  66. 66.

    Karen

    June 13, 2012 at 5:08 pm

    The rich have succeeded by pitting the peons against each other.

    When the pie is shrinking, people look for ways, any way, to keep their little tiny piece of the pie. That means keeping people who “don’t deserve it” away from getting any of the pie.

    Rich people know that by inflaming people’s hatreds, instead of the rabble banding together that they’ll fight each other instead of sticking together. They also know that religion is the fastest way of accomplishing this.

    They’ve also created this Stockholm Syndrome where the people they victimize feel grateful for it and attack anyone who wants to make things fairer.

    Obama won because of panic. I’m not saying he didn’t deserve to win against McCain but if the banks hadn’t collapsed and McCain didn’t act like Marie Antoinette, Obama would not have won. Period.

    And the rich may have helped Obama win but McCain was the one they really wanted. After all, it was his friendship with Phil Gramm that caused him to vote for the deregulation.

    The rich may be buying the Democratic party to hedge its bets but it owns the GOP outright. That’s why they had to create their version of the Tea Party and create the illusion of populism.

    When they finally bought the Supreme Court enough to pass Citizen’s United then they finally took off the gloves.

    Romney is the final piece in this equation. Talk about how “evil” Obama is, at least he’s not one of the aristocracy.

    There’s this group of people out there who wants Romney to win in the hopes that by letting him and his masters run the country into the ground, people will embrace liberalism as the great alternative.

    Those are the same people who stayed home in 2010, thinking “that will teach the Democratic party a lesson.”

    Oh it taught them a lesson. It taught them that it’s more profitable to be a Republican. And it taught the GOP a lesson that was just proven in Wisconsin. Even if a Dem represents the people’s benefit better, Dems can’t depend on them.

  67. 67.

    Omnes Omnibus

    June 13, 2012 at 5:13 pm

    @Maude: Banning for meanness could really thin the ranks around here. I know I am in the minority here, but I like her and thought she was able to bring value to discussions. I am not going to further derail the thread on this.

  68. 68.

    Karen

    June 13, 2012 at 5:14 pm

    For some reason it didn’t say it but I am “undefined.”

  69. 69.

    James E Powell

    June 13, 2012 at 5:14 pm

    I said it before, I’ll say it again: Ezra Klein is his generation’s Richard Cohen.

    Anyone who wants to get a decent paycheck for writing political or economic essays must demonstrate that he or she is a reliable supporter of the ruling class and the status quo, with no more than minor tweeks.

  70. 70.

    Karen

    June 13, 2012 at 5:19 pm

    @James E Powell:

    But if that’s the case then why does he sub for Rachel Maddow sometimes?

  71. 71.

    Powdermonkey

    June 13, 2012 at 5:53 pm

    @Ruckus:
    The metaphor was intended to be economy wide, water heater is the economy, the house represents the physical country, the residents of the house are the residents of the country.

    Like all metaphors it is flawed, but too big to fail would be removal of a fail-safe or a pressure valve.

    My personal thought is that the previous regime of “safety valves” have made the types of pressure that would have produced a reaction in the past (mass starvation, mass joblessness, grinding poverty, blatantly rigged election systems, blatantly self dealing) less likely. However the more those valves are tampered with the more the pressure builds up. The worse the reaction. As someone pointed out up thread, it’s unlikely the peasants will be armed with pitchforks this time, and the “elite” won’t be packing swords. It will get ugly, fast!

  72. 72.

    IrishGirl

    June 13, 2012 at 6:03 pm

    @ChrisB:

    Examples of policies that truly damaged the interests of the wealthy are few and far between

    That’s why the rich and royal end up losing their heads periodically. The rich accrue too much wealth and stop pretending to give a crap about everyone else, and everyone else tries “policies” and when those don’t work, everyone else gets pissed and the streets flow with blood. Too bad that the rich don’t seem to remember this about history. You would think they would have some kind of desire to avoid such long term calamity. But the funny thing about greed is that it always makes the rich only look forward to the next check and that makes them blind to the next bloody revolution in the making.

  73. 73.

    Ruckus

    June 13, 2012 at 6:10 pm

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
    I’m not totally convinced you are correct but am not disagreeing with you. Makes more sense than a WOD or GWOT. Politicians will protect power before money if they can’t have both.

  74. 74.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    June 13, 2012 at 6:19 pm

    Meanwhile, back at the front, the enemy slathers the moneychangers with adoration.

    The long-shot big hope for Wall Street reformers Wednesday was that JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon would trip up before the Senate Banking Committee and expose the need for tighter rules governing big banks. His firm, after all, recently lost billions making risky bets with depositor funds on the line.

    Instead, with some notable exceptions, the senators themselves turned the cross-examination into a coronation, and exposed the extent to which elected officials still feel compelled to genuflect to powerful financial interests.

    And this is why we can’t have nice things, the mold of greed is set so deep at present, sometimes I wonder that the conservative movement didn’t so much implode under GWB, but actually won the class wars, and disbanded to count their cash.

    His exchanges with GOP senators were even more saccharine. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) — a tea party hero — gave Dimon a full pardon. “I really appreciate you voluntarily coming in to talk with us,” he said. “It is important that we talk about things happening in the industry. It helps us as we look forward and, hopefully, it will contribute to best practice scenarios in industry. I appreciate your emphasis on continuous quality improvement. We can hardly sit in judgment of your losing $2 billion. We lose twice that every day in Washington.”

    Yes, a billion here, a billion there lost, isn’t even real money when considering feeding the slacker poor and dispossessed. There will always be enough blue state wealth to handle that chore for South Carolina, and the Jim Dements of the world.

    The cherry on top were reports of Dimon flashing his Presnit Seal cuff links to puke funnelling Senators. Now, it’s off to the coliseum for some gladiator fights.

    The rest of us can sharpen our pitchforks, and oil up the lanterns. Last resorts, and all of that. Tally Ho!!

  75. 75.

    Ruckus

    June 13, 2012 at 6:21 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    She certainly has provided some useful comments but lately it seems they are all just a stream of spiteful electrons, adding nothing to the dialog. There are a number of trolls who also add nothing to the dialog but the troll fests can at least be amusing and get other points going. Her? Lately? Not so much.

  76. 76.

    Ruckus

    June 13, 2012 at 6:31 pm

    @Powdermonkey:
    Oh we agree. But your question was it too late to stop or slow them down without well, bloodshed and I think there are very few openings for that to happen.
    I don’t want bloodshed of any kind but I almost never, ever get what I want and now rarely even what I need. And of course I’m not alone, it’s quite a crowded road. Which is of course what makes a bad time much more likely.

  77. 77.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    June 13, 2012 at 6:40 pm

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    apparently, that is the case here. Though I see Corner Stone and his important voice is left intact.

    @John Cole:

    I just banned you. Who’s running away now, asshole?

    I’m sorry, but banning someone for no good reason, is exactly the opposite of ‘running away’. It is you running away, straight into the waiting arms of stupid. Ban me too, if you have the nuts for it. I said something mean, so what are you waiting for? tough guy.

  78. 78.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    June 13, 2012 at 6:45 pm

    @Stuck in the Funhouse: Grow up, Stuck.

  79. 79.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    June 13, 2012 at 6:47 pm

    @Comrade Scrutinizer:

    You grow up, and take Cole with you. eemom is harmless. Kiss my ass.

  80. 80.

    Powdermonkey

    June 13, 2012 at 7:01 pm

    @Ruckus:
    FWIW. I think the bloodshed will be at a minimum, mostly due to the “smart rich people” ie. FDR, TR and that type.

    Even most randians can recognize when they are outnumbered and out gunned and it’s time to negotiate. The ones that don’t well… The market may decide against them.

    The question is how long the current state of affairs or worse can continue before the torches come out. 5 – 10 – 20 years? I don’t know.

  81. 81.

    James E Powell

    June 13, 2012 at 7:10 pm

    @Ruckus
    “But your question was it too late to stop or slow them down without well, bloodshed and I think there are very few openings for that to happen.”

    I guess because I want so badly to believe we can change without another civil war, I do believe it.

    The Civil Rights Acts and demolition of Jim Crow moved enough white voters from D to R to enable the current death-grip the Republicans have on any progress. To pry loose of that grip we would have to pry loose enough of those white voters. Can anyone imagine, let alone develop, any issue that would do that?

  82. 82.

    Jebediah

    June 13, 2012 at 9:24 pm

    @Powdermonkey:

    As someone pointed out up thread, it’s unlikely the peasants will be armed with pitchforks this time, and the “elite” won’t be packing swords. It will get ugly, fast!

    The police and military are far too well-armed for revolution to succeed – unless both say “fuck it, no way am I shooting Americans.” Otherwise, it proceeds until there is no one left willing to die.
    Of course, I am not a tactician. I could be wrong.

  83. 83.

    Barry

    June 13, 2012 at 9:37 pm

    @Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor: “I used to read pandagon.net back in 2004. It’s been kind of tragic, seeing Ezra’s slow (but probably inexorable) transformation from pro-Edwards blogger kid, to wonky but reality-based health care wunderkind, to (essentially) just a smarter version of Luke Russert.”

    I’m not saying that you have to lose your soul writing for the Kaplan Daily –

    on second thought, I am saying that. Ezra will have his reasonable moments for quite some time, and he’ll probably be allowed the one (small, inconsequential) hobby horse to ride slowly around the corral, but the rot is clear.

  84. 84.

    Barry

    June 13, 2012 at 9:38 pm

    @Yossarian: “That’s a massively unfair take on what Ezra Klein was trying to say.”

    No, it’s a massively fair take – or were you going to offer an actual argument?

  85. 85.

    Powdermonkey

    June 14, 2012 at 7:23 am

    @Jebediah:
    Historically most “Peasant” or “Popular” revolutions are full of both former and deserting troops from whatever standing army there is at the time… at least in the end. The race is to on one side suborn and integrate as many of the police/army as possible to isolate the “elites” and on the other side to bribe/appeal to the patriotism/and again bribe the police/army to make dragging down the “elites” as hard as possible.

    It’s actually a little eye opening to read up on the history of the Farmer/Peasant revolutions and realize how little they are taught in schools for how often they happened. even if they never were particularly violent.
    There might be a reason for that…

  86. 86.

    Lojasmo

    June 22, 2012 at 2:54 pm

    @Stuck in the Funhouse:

    Harmless, but obnoxious to the point of distraction. Gladly the ban was temporary AND EE is still off sulking. I, for one, believe her absence enriches the environment,

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