Culture Wars Series cont.,

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• Liberals And Conservatives Switch Places--Sort Of (The Political Duality Of Rep and Dem, Pt 3b) by: Paul Rosenberg

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Free Lunch Conservatism
All the above explains motivations-and, broadly stated, means as well. But it does not really explain how old-fashioned monopolistic capitalism made such a striking comeback, producing a rapid rise in economic polarization, which virtually halted a centuries-long history of each generation of Americans doing better economically than the generation before. These political developments were so transparently opposed to the common good, and yet were so readily normalized that they require special explanation in their own right-as well as being crucial to understand if we wish to reverse them, as it seems inarguable that a progressive politics must do.

For this, we require an explanation that brings us back to the main thrust of this diary series. The mechanism I propose was two-fold: First, traditional conservatism had utterly failed, and try as it might to re-present itself, people might buy it in the abstract, but when it came down to brass tacks, they were down with the New Deal, and broad government spending. A conservative ideology that was halfway reality-based could not appeal to people whose everyday experience told them that government had an important role to play, even if they longed for the freedom of the Wild West and wished it were not so. Still worse was a conservatism of austerity that promised people lots of hard work, with nothing much to show for it. For conservatism to succeed, it had to totally cut its reality-based ties, and remake itself in the image of liberalism, promising good times for all, a better tomorrow, morning in America.


This was the beauty of supply-side economics, as sketched out in the earlier diary "The Big Lie And The Rightwing's Neo-Feudal Vision (A Supplement To The Political Duality Series)": it promised something for nothing: tax cuts would make tax revenues grow. Instead of the traditional conservative message of sacrifice and hard work, this free lunch conservatism leap-frogged over the most utopian promises that mainstream liberalism had ever made. Its promises were so excessive that they could only be compared to Communism.



It's worth noting some other aspects of reality-denial that surfaced at this time. Racism suddenly vanished overnight, along with any sense that the conservatives who had fiercely defended it were in any sense morally lacking. (Indeed, the fact that black people remained poor even after racism had vanished seemed to indicate that conservatives had been right all along-there was something morally wrong with the great mass of black people, and liberals were doing them no favors by pretending otherwise.)


Furthermore, by discovering the cause of fighting abortion, conservatives staked a claim to the new Civil Rights Movement. Vietnam was not tragic betrayal of ideals, a genocidal war of domination, marked by countless atrocities, fought for no good reason, and built on an elaborate foundation of lies. It was a noble crusade, one that we had actually won, in fact, before the treasonous liberals in the media and the Democratic Congress stole it from us. And as for the environment, trees were a leading cause of pollution.



In all these ways and more, by cutting its reality-based ties, rightwing movement conservatism positioned itself for a dynamic of magical thinking, much like the rightwing movements of early 20th Century Europe. Such a dynamic holds tremendous advantages over reality-based politics, simply because it is able to promise so much more-miracles both economic and spiritual. The arguments for such a magical politics cannot be made in the same mundane reality-based way that one argues for realist politics. One cannot discuss the Pentagon Papers, for example. One must talk about Rambo instead, with his poignant question, "This time, will they let us win?" One cannot study the sociology and economics of poverty. One must tell stories of non-existent "welfare queens." Nor can one realistically face the insanity of nuclear brinksmanship, and preparing to "win" a nuclear war. Instead, one must tell fairy tales about a Star Wars missile shield, like a giant Superdome protecting the entire country.


All these problems that conservatism could not face and solve were to some degree insoluble because the world is simply too complicated for its Level 3 solutions. It could neither grasp nor abide the Level 4 solutions of liberalism, but it could step in aggressively when liberalism faltered, either because a changing Level 4 world always throws up set-backs from time to time, or because the world was becoming even more complex-a post-modern Level 5 world. And when it stepped in because liberalism faltered, it stepped in with simplistic stories, about turning back to the good old days, and moving forward at the same time.


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Even More Good Analysis and History Combined