There’s a fabulous book called What’s the Matter with Kansas? that offers an excellent explanation of how neoconservatives managed to lie their way into the hearts of Middle Americans and convince them that the neoconservative viewpoints are actually beneficial to them, when the reality is precisely the opposite. I stress “neoconservative” here because I have grown to consider myself a conservative in the classical sense of the word: one who believes in a small federal government that has low taxes, defers to state and local governments for as many functions as possible, and otherwise stays out of people’s lives.
The current crop of Republicans are thus anything but conservatives, which is why the term “neoconservative” was coined. They are economically liberal, in that they have reduced taxes for the top 5% of American incomes, while on the other hand they have presided over the largest increase in Federal spending since the Great Depression. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that if you reduce your income and increase your expenses, you have to either borrow money or go bankrupt. Since we’re not bankrupt, our government has been borrowing money to pay for the tax cuts and budget increases. It also doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that when you take out a loan, you have to pay it back, with interest. So it follows that tax cuts without spending cuts equals a much larger overall financial burden due to interest. Thus the taxes are not being cut at all — they are simply being deferred. Which means that we will all end up paying more than we would have if they would have just left the taxes alone. And if you happen to die before the interest comes due, guess who will have to pay for it? Your kids.
Don’t believe me? One of the nation’s most conservative newspapers, The Washington Times, had an article today about how Tom DeLay says that our government is now operating at peak efficiency. Some of America’s most conservative think tanks rebuff Tom’s absurd opinion with actual facts while some other Republican Congressmen actually go so far as to ask whether or not they are all serving in the same government.
This is a perfect case of where the neocons have somehow convinced Kansans (and Ohioans and Oklahomans and other normally sensible people) that tax cuts are always good for them, even when the tax cuts actually only affect the rich and often result in a tax increase for the Kansans, et al. (Tell that to New Orleans’s levees and the 500,000 displaced people there).
My stepfather is a case in point: before the election last year, he got into a shouting match with both me and Kevin on two separate occasions. Now this is a guy who is normally cool, calm, collected, and rarely bothered by anything, and yet he was really, truly angry. He was yelling things like “Kerry would increase taxes on couples who make more than $200,000 a year!” Nevermind that he and my mother do not make $200,000 a year. Nor does 99.8% of the rest of America, according to the US Census Bureau. Somehow, through the flashy graphics and vitriol and lies that Faux (Fox) News and its ilk spews on a daily basis, the neocons have convinced the average American that they are best served by this neocon ideology.
In fact, because of the creep of the Alternative Minimum Tax, people like my mom and stepdad have actually seen their tax burden increase under Bush, and again this says nothing of the spending increases and resultant interest penalties we all are going to see as a result of it. It also says nothing about how the tax cuts axed money from programs like the ones that would have shored up the levees in New Orleans, and now the government is borrowing nearly $70 billion to pay for it, when the original spending amount was in the single-digit billions. So let’s see: spend a few billion to shore up the levees and don’t cut taxes, or cut taxes, don’t fix the levees, watch people suffer and die, then borrow tens of billions (with interest) to pay for the resultant disaster and tuck your tail between your legs and say you’re sorry?
We all know what the neocons picked.
But on the other hand, the neocons are socially conservative, in that they want to impose a fundamentalist Christian theology down the throats of everyone in the country and essentially legislate morality on issues such as abortion, sex, women’s health, science, and the definition of “family.” So if you voted for anyone in this administration and yet are opposed to religious fundamentalism, you are again fooled by the neocon machine.
I have members of my family who voted for Bush and simply do not care that he lied to them over and over and over again. They say they feel “safer” with Bush and his cronies in office and blithely ignore that we are inciting Islamic fundamentalists to attack us while simultaneously saying we are at war with them while simultaneously encouraging Christian fundamentalists to enforce their viewpoints on everyone in our country.
None of this makes any sense. These are sensible people who have been driven to senseless acts by lies and fear for their own safety.
At some point a culture of sensibility will return to our country. Until then we are stuck with this idiot:
