So-called neoliberalism is little more than neoconservatism with heart. Essentially, however, the neoliberal is much like the so-called moderate Republican who tolerates the ranting of a true-blooded conservative who threatens to gather up his marbles unless his irrelevant whims are accommodated but with a meager semblance of compromise. Since the Reagan revolution — more accurately, reactionism — the pride of a nation once guided by pragmatic wisdom had been gradually slipping away and is now heading for total destruction by neoconservatives in full power that favors the illusion of global democracy as the playground for corporate power.
After all, why not? — the illusion has worked domestically. Trump’s “you’re fired” works splendidly rather than “you’re hired.” Consumers, as though they were not themselves workers, laud Wal-Mart for its laissez-faire operation that ostensibly keeps billions in the pockets of consumers regardless of the company’s slave trade abroad and reliance on its domestic workers’ spousal benefits from another company. Once generous corporations are now beset with medical insurance and pension plans for their workers in a climate of fierce global competition and thereby workers are told that the better way is to have self-reliant medical savings and retirement plans, despite a declining middle class and standard of living. CEOs are rewarded for incompetence or measured by the short term bottom line. Carter’s cardigan sweater is still a joke, rather than haunting as oil soars to $60 a barrel. In the past three months fifty American soldiers dead in Afghanistan is at end of the day insignificant since that war has been won and forgotten. Not forgotten, however, is the priority of the placement of the Ten Commandments.
The American mind set is captivated by Madison Avenue and public relations that foster the American playground: Brad Pitt’s Achilles is more important than GI Joe in Iraq; Tom Cruise’s teenage, puppy love behavior upstages the grief of current war widows; it is far more dramatic to drive recklessly to show off a new car than to show concern for unprotected war vehicles in Iraq; elusive is the irony of G Live while chomping on a Big Mac or Taco; cell phones for the entire family trumps an email to a loved one overseas; “God Bless America” in the seventh inning placates the conscience, if any, of the baseball fan; Bud Lite vs. Miller Light is the great war of the masses.
Cowardly neoliberalism, then, is an affront to the American people who deep down, despite innumerable distractions from the right, cry for a better way to regain the pride of a nation that can only materialize by setting straight the real priorities uncontaminated by hypocritical global, moral, and economic values.
Copyright © 2005 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: July 7, 2005.
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