I was checking out Paul Krugman’s blog, and finally got around to reading The Day Nothing Changed. Here’s an excerpt:
...In the weeks and months after the atrocity, news media had a narrative about what it meant – basically, thatit was a Pearl Harbor moment that brought America together with a new seriousness and resolve. This was comforting and reassuring. It was also totally false, literally from the first minutes.
The truth, as we now know, is that Bush administration officials rejoiced, even as the fires were still burning, at the opportunity they now had to fight the unrelated war they always wanted. But that wasn’t all: Republicans in Congress also saw opportunity for partisan gain from the start. Within less than two days Congressional staffers were telling me about GOP efforts to exploit the atrocity to ram through a cut in capital gains taxes.
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Krugman tried to report this, and got lots of pushback from readers who did not want to hear or believe it. They wanted the comforting story of unity instead, country before party, and all that. We were all played for suckers.
Well, here we are now, and if anything the GOP has gotten worse. Division is worse than ever — and the GOP’s real agenda is still serving the oligarchy. The response to Hurricanes Harvey and Irma is “We need tax cuts!”
Krugman concludes by speculating if the Republicans of 1941 had been like the Republicans of today, their response to Pearl Harbor would have been to blame FDR, and oppose the financial measures needed to fight the war. Shock Doctrine Disaster Capitalism, in other words.
The Day It Changed: January 20, 1981
Osama bin Laden’s genius was to pierce the illusion of American exceptionalism and allow the rot at the heart to leak out all over everything, covered in a cloak of false patriotism. Krugman points out that a one-off terror attack was not the existential threat to America that Pearl Harbor was. While Krugman doesn’t mention it, the real attack had taken place decades earlier.
Before 911 was the Reagan Revolution, in which the GOP declared war on our government. It was all about turning our government of, by, and for the people into a wealth transfer machine for the rich. That was the attack on America that changed everything, and not for the better. It was hidden behind smooth lies and dressed up in patriotic imagery, but it was no less destructive in its aims.
The Reagan Revolution did not begin with a devastating attack on America, but the damage it has done has been far more insidious. Charles P. Pierce nailed it in 2013.
...We have elected the people sitting on hold, waiting for their moment on an evening drive-time radio talk show.
We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too. We have elected people to govern us who do not believe in government.
...We have elected a national legislature in which the true power resides in a cabal of vandals, a nihilistic brigade that believes that its opposition to a bill directing millions of new customers to the nation's insurance companies is the equivalent of standing up to the Nazis in 1938, to the bravery of the passengers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and to Mel Gibson's account of the Scottish Wars of Independence in the 13th Century. We have elected a national legislature that looks into the mirror and sees itself already cast in marble.
...Ultimately, as we all wrapped ourselves in good intentions, a prion disease was eating away at the country's higher functions. One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains.
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Donald Trump is the true heir of Ronald Reagan: oblivious to facts, skilled at media manipulation, and a man in a job beyond his comprehension. We’ve gone from a Grade B movie actor to a Reality TV con man, with a supporting cast that now controls most of the states and all three branches of the Federal Government.
Neo-Nazis and the KKK march openly in the streets. Heavily armed know-nothings proudly wave the flag of treason and call themselves patriots. The Department of Justice is busy working on plans to suppress votes and unleashing the police against “those people”. Millions live in fear of a de facto ethnic cleansing. Corporations commit atrocities against the health and financial well-being of ordinary people, and are rewarded for it. Our allies overseas look on in horror, and our enemies are emboldened.
Welcome to the Morning After in America.