Krugman

This letter is titled as it is because much of it is paraphrasing what Paul Krugmen wrote in his Dec. 24 Times op-ed piece. To those who read it I apologize for the repetition and suggest starting in the middle. The article dealt with the Republican disinformation machine that has been working its wonders the past two years. In it he cited a claim by Minnesota Governor Pawlenty that “since January 2008” the private sector has lost jobs while the government has added half a million. This is an obvious attempt to show that an Obama presidency means bloated government. This preaching works with the choir and people with bad memories for dates. He wasn’t inaugurated until 2009.  The increased government hiring at issue was the direct result of personnel needed for the 2010 census.

Krugman goes on to mention an alleged “explosion in the number of federal regulators,” mentioned by right wing “think tanks” as evidence of Obama’s affinity for excessive regulation. This “explosion” was for additional Homeland Security regulators, a strange accusatory tone coming from the party reputed to be “good on security.” Krugman summarizes this deceptive arithmetic charitably by saying “…we should never assume malice when ignorance remains a possibility.” I wished I’d a said that.

His final point is that Republicans are much better staffed than the Democrats with “researchers” who come up with this sort of “information.” One of them is the wife of a Supreme Court Justice. This observation is symptomatic of our entire two party system, which involves weapons more lethal than semantic chicanery. 

A recipient and sometime responder to these letters chided me for saying that I hoped the spokesman for our side would be more like Rush Limbaugh than Pete Seeger. He specified Lenin, no doubt to show that dictatorships can come from either side, a valid point. But it seems to me, just offhand, that a big majority of dictatorships that developed in my lifetime came from the right. Maybe someone can enlighten me on this subject.

Beyond what’s written in law, there are no Marquis of Queensbury rules to govern partisan domestic politics. But there’s no question in my mind that violations of what most objective people regard as ethical practice, have been committed more frequently and taken to greater length by Republicans. Playing by a reasonable set of rules may be the proper thing to do theoretically. As a practical matter it doesn’t seem to be working very well. 

At the moment we don’t want a facsimile of the Fat Man to lead the charge, although that may eventually be the fire it takes to fight fire. But the advance of the Philistines and their concomitant pillaging of the nation must be stopped, and stopped soon. If it isn’t we might end up with our own Nikolai Lenin.