Witten by Joe Brewer
In eight short years, conservatives have effectively bankrupted many state governments and left the fed in shambles. And now citizens have to “make tough decisions” and share the suffering equally across the land (unless of course, you’re part of that lucky 1 percent who co-opted the functions of government to serve their own ends … they’ll be cozy with their offshore bank accounts, golden parachutes and permanent tax holidays).
Are you a teacher who educates our future citizens? Too bad. You’ve got to tighten your belt and let that job go. Manual laborer? Sorry, but that job can earn more money for our shareholders if it’s done in Micronesia. Need a college degree? Prepare for indentured servitude because you’ll be working to pay us off for most of your adult life. Health care? Ha! That’s just a Ponzi scheme dreamed up by a bunch of socialists.
Ever wonder how conservatives did all this?
Well, here’s your very own how-to manual for getting Big Government out of the way so you and your buddies can horde all the wealth to yourselves and build your empire.
Step 1: Blame the Individuals
Every battle has to have two sides, so you’ll need to divide the people against each other. This means that you’ll need to declare that “there’s no such thing as society” and focus the entire debate on the faults of individuals.
Enron screwed people over? That’s just a few bad apples. The business news a lap dog for corporate excess? That’s just Jim Cramer doing his thing. The economy in shambles? That’s just George W leaving his legacy.
And of course the housing crisis is the fault of greedy buyers. Industry can’t do right for us because of that welfare queen. And government can’t serve the people because of that corrupt politician and his special-interest crony.
Get the people talking about individuals and it’ll be easy to blind them to the public infrastructure they depend on. You don’t want anyone to make a peep when we gut the schools, defund public works and empty out the Treasury. Those problems will just be fodder to throw at the sorry Democrats we’ll blame when the fit hits the shan.
Step 2: Cut Taxes
Now that you’ve gotten everyone bickering about each other (and ignoring us), you can get to work dismantling the government. All you have to do is cut taxes. Yes, it’s that simple. One move and you get all the benefits of (1) weakening every social program; (2) making government services inadequate; (3) setting the stage for calling out “waste” and inefficiencies (more of that blame game!); (4) keeping your richest friends from ever having to pay for the infrastructure they exploit to make all that money; (5) getting nonprofits and opposition leaders in the government (progressives … eck!!) to spend all their precious resources fighting to keep things in the budget, and (6) outsourcing government operations to your buddies in the corporate world so they can profit from them.
This one move is strategic. It does all the work for you.
And when life starts looking dire, you get opportunities you never dreamed possible in a democracy.
Step 3: Exploit Disaster
If you’ve managed to accomplish steps 1 and 2, people will be in a panic. And we all know that panicky people make rash decisions. Now is your chance to push that unpopular agenda through the cracks – disaster capitalism at its best!
Remember how we tricked the populace into an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq to secure oil revenues? That wouldn’t have happened if people weren’t scared out of their wits by the fright of terrorism. Think people would have gone for No Child Left Behind and allowed tests to replace learning in the classroom? We had to fabricate a crisis (which took years of hard work to create) to push that one through. And you know that there’s no way we could take away so many civil liberties with the Patriot Act if the debate was drawn out for weeks under public scrutiny.
So there you have it. Three easy steps to destroy the government.
If you’re an overachiever (you know who you are!), you might even try giving away billions to your buddies in the banking industry when the bottom falls out. Or consider no-bid contracts to our old pals in the energy and defense sectors when no one is looking. Or, and this takes some special skill, you might call any efforts to “increase revenues” just another example of irresponsible spending that got us into this mess in the first place.
Note 1: Take care that progressives don’t ever learn about this strategy. It could be nullified and made ineffective by exposing our agenda, allowing people to organize, or letting government work well enough for people to start thinking that government isn’t inherently bad and (gasp!) that it might be useful for something other than empire-building.
Note 2: Want a more detailed discussion of how these ideas were so successfully implemented? This excellent series by Sara Robinson will help you learn how to take over the common sense of an entire culture:
Note 3: Not satisfied with this strategy? Maybe you’ll want to build a different kind of politics that works in another way.
You have learned my rules well, grasshopper.
Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
If you want to read more of my rules, see http://rightcoast.typepad.com/rightcoast/2009/03/saul-alinskys-white-house-and-rush-limbaughgail-heriot.html
You have got to be the most ignorant person I have ever stumbled across.
With people like you around, no wonder we are so screwed up. Blinded by hate and irrational from the start. You probably also decry the abuse of our environment while indifferently throwing away four pounds of packaging a day in your well-lighted, air-conditioned hi-rise flat, or three bedroom house, or college dorm paid for by mom and dad. Not that any of those are bad. More that they’re available to you because, in spite of our problems, we’re still awfully well off compared to most of the world’s population.
Eight years to do all that you claim? It would take a lifetime to forward this agenda of self-destruction. No doubt, W didn’t do anybody a favor in his two terms. But the idea that “conservatives” are to blame for today’s headlines is small-minded and silly. IF you have to point a short finger (?) at someone, start with the media for working so hard to keep fear at a high level. Then look at yourself as the viewer they target.
Of course, the Dems are trying to go straight to Step 3 and are taking this country from bad to worse in the process. Let’s all get off the “it’s so bad because of some rich dude” train and start looking at how to cut back our own profligate ways.
And let’s let the “rich dudes” keep paying the majority of the taxes (they already do) and keep the pressure on gov’t not to go crazy with the spending.
Wow, the power of the MSM never ceases to amaze me. Here’s another blogger who is reciting virtually every talking point from the arsenal of the the NYT or MSNBC, without even a clue that virtually everything he said above is either misleading, taken out of context, or a flat-out lie. Good grief pal, do yourself a favor and take a look around. Learn something for yourself, ’cause you look rather silly simply spouting someone else’s bullet points.
The Democrats are:
1. Blaming individuals
Nanci Pelosi would blame her own stupidity on Bush if she could. Barney Frank wants names to investigate at AIG. He should investigate his own voting record. He seems to have forgotten that he voted for TARP. I’m not saying that failed execs deserve big bonuses. I’m saying that failed execs actually deserve to fail.
2. Cutting taxes
On people who don’t pay income taxes. If you have a job, you are paying the mortgage of someone who does not.(they chose the house and you are paying for it) If you have a job, you will be paying the medical bills of someone who doesn’t. If you have a job, you will be paying debt off for someone who doesn’t. DO YOU WANT A JOB?
3. Exploiting Disaster
Using the economic situation in order to pass the biggest, most disgusting spending bill ever.(100% borrowed and no House Republicans voted for it) How will the economy be “stimulated” in 40 years when we owe 3.2 trillion dollars because we borrowed $800 billion to “fix” that long forgotten crisis?
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Dominic Lawson: Democrat fingerprints are all over the financial crisis
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/dominic-lawson/dominic-lawson-democrat-fingerprints-are-all-over-the-financial-crisis-949653.html
What is the proximate cause of the collapse of confidence in the world’s banks? Millions of improvident loans to American housebuyers. Which organisations were on their own responsible for guaranteeing half of this $12 trillion market? Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the so-called Government Sponsored Enterprises which last month were formally nationalised to prevent their immediate and catastrophic collapse. Now, who do you think were among the leading figures blocking all the earlier attempts by President Bush โ and other Republicans โ to bring these lending behemoths under greater regulatory control? Step forward, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
————-
And that’s in ‘The Independent’ – a paper so far to the left it makes the NYT look moderate.
This guy is in idiot. I can’t believe I even bothered scanning over it. I wish comments came BEFORE the article, so I could tell if it was even worth reading or not. Most of the readers are more educated than the publishers.
This is a really good satirical article, but the title’s misleading. What I mean is, you have to have something that is operating smoothly and with great success to “destroy” it.
We’ve gotten to this point as a direct result of a system that was so easy to corrupt it was practically begging for it. Like a computer. Any personal computer can get a virus.
…But a Mac can’t.
Think about it.
Once Obama gets it fixed, and he will, you only have to remember one thing, never EVER elect another republican for any position above dogcatcher and I’m not too sure about that one.
When I signed up to “The Best Article Every Day”, I wasn’t looking for ignorant liberal screeds. I get that whoever selects these is veeeeery “progressive”, but can’t we stick with porn movie flow charts and job search websites, stuff like that? Make us laugh, be useful. Knock it off with the political proselytizing.
Wow.So many retards, so little time.
First of all the start of the lending disaster can be placed squarely on the Clinton administration’s shoulders. They were so eager to get votes by “helping” the poor, the black, and the disadvantaged that they DID pass legislation and put pressure on lending institutions to loan to these people where were clearly unable to reliably pay these loans back. And as a previous poster already mentioned many REPUBLICANS(no dems) TRIED to pass legislation to reign in the stupid lending practices implemented by democrats, but failed, BECAUSE of democrats.
ANYONE who studies political history even a little will soon discover that EVERY governmental, economic and social train wreck that has occurred has its roots firmly planted in the previous administration…or even administrations further back. But NEVER have they been caused by the administration that is in office at the time of their happening. Sure,Bush didn’t help things by spending so much money on the war AND improving our security at airports and other places. BUT, even that can be, at the very least, partly blamed on Clinton. Almost every nation has had all this heightened security, such as our airports have now. Clinton received information regarding the threat of Bin Laden but did not act on it.(it can be said that bush also knew but by then he had other threat reports to deal with, since the threat information is almost daily)Now, ANY idiot KNOWS that the best and cheapest way to implement a huge security upgrade is slowly, over time. Bush, thanks to the inaction of Clinton and the events of 9/11(whether or not it is the direct result of Clinton,we would have had a better chance of stopping it if he had acted)was not given the luxury of implementing these much needed and LONG overdo security improvements. Which means he had to spend a LOT of extra money because we NEEDED it done RIGHT NOW. not in 5-10 years as it should have taken.And the war? Maybe needed, maybe not. but we have killed a LOT of people that wanted to kill us.I would rather fight them in another country than in my own, and since the war started i haven’t noticed any attacks on our soil. Have you?
And Obama fixing this? Keep dreaming. You don’t fix a crisis caused by bad spending by spending more. you fix it by fixing the things that caused the bad spending.(Fun Fact: If Obama gets his way and is able to spend every dime he has PROPOSED to spend then he will have spent more money than our country since it became a country, including all the wars we have been in) That people is retardation at it democratic finest.
Trish Dickson:
Hope you know a Mac is just has vulnerable and susceptible to viruses as Windows is.In fact there are 3 or so viruses written for the Mac. the reason their aren’t more is simply because not enough people own them to make it worthwhile. Once enough people use them you will see viruses being written for them.And the good news is that there is very little in the way of virus protection written for a Mac. so when they first hit, it will be bad. If you want to keep people from writing viruses for the Mac you should be LOUDLY telling everyone how much you hate it in the hope of keeping them from buying one.
And the reason almost no one uses a Mac, compared to a windows PC is simple. They suck. Sure they don’t crash as much and have much fewer problems in regards to software and hardware. Does anyone know why? Simple really. Because there is almost no software or hardware that works with a Mac as compared to a Windows PC. Think about it. Think about the literally tens, or hundreds of millions of software/hardware combinations there are for a PC. Now go and see how many HD’s, CD-DVD-Bluray drives and multi drives. Monitors, External HD’s the list is small for a mac. And their are MANY things you can’t do on a Mac because Apple coded it so it can’t be done, they made the Mac mostly for graphics and at least semi-experienced users. It is NOT the “everymans” computer. whereas Microsoft has designed an operating system that can literally be used by everyone from super geniuses right down the complete idiot that walks around with his finger up his nose half the time. And it does a fine job considering all the extra code that has to be written to handle the extremely broad market it is meant to serve as compared tot he Mac. Do you think that if Microsoft did to Windows what apple did to the Mac(lock the code down making it incompatible with much of the software and hardware out there) it wouldn’t be much more stable? Of course it would,only an idiot would think otherwise.(btw, most stability issues are really caused by after market software using lousy code AND piss-poor code writing ability. Not by Windows directly) Basic fact of life. the more something can do the more problems you can have with it. And let’s face it, Windows can do hundreds of times more things than a Mac can. So potential for that much more to screw up.
Interesting satire article. I’m glad to see the site isn’t all porn flow charts and beer. Too bad you dragged all the political freaks out. It left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
Robert Pruitt
walks around with his finger up his nose half the time
1) The left has done nothing but blame individuals for the past 9 years. If this is some nefarious conservative strategy, cons certainly didn’t invent it. Furthermore, your Cramer and Bush examples are contradictory to your (as I understand it) point: conservatives didn’t blame Cramer or Bush for anything, liberals did.
2) The left’s version of this step is “cut defense spending.” In one fell swoop, a whole nation is left vulnerable and underpowered. Sounds a bit like hyperbole, since this is the world’s superpower? That’s because it is, and so is your point.
3) Remember how Obama tricked the whole nation to vote for him, exploiting a shuddering economy and a wholly imagined quagmire in Iraq? Oh and do you remember how he further fucked things up after he was elected? Yes, his war with Rush Limbaugh (aren’t conservatives focused on individuals?) and appointments of various corrupt buddies resemble the actions of someone who never does anything under false pretenses.
I wonder if you even know what conservative means.
That was amusing
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