Every political project is a project of force. Every political leader is summoning supporters to war. And the reward of the war is loot and plunder.
Generally, of course, the leader does not put his project in quite those terms. Usually his justification for war is that we must act now before the enemy strikes us. He must arouse in his followers the natural fear of the tribe next door, that they might suddenly strike us in a dawn raid, kill all the men and rape all the women.
Another casus belli is that the other guys are robbing us blind. You can see that at work in everything from the justification of taxing and regulating corporations to the renegotiating of trade relations with China.
And what about the workers! They are being screwed by their greedy employers! And what about women that only earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by a man. And blacks, cheated since forever by racism.
And always, if "you join in our crusade" as the Les Mis chorus sang, there will be rewards: loot and plunder.
In domestic politics with an established ruling class, this program is effected by the tactics of "divide and conquer." You set different groups against each other, all the better to tax and dominate them. For imagine what would happen if men stopped fighting with women, and blacks with whites? Why, they, er, we might all join up and decide that it is time to loot and plunder the ruling class and put them all in jail! Yay!
Notice that if a government does not have much spending, then the people need not be too concerned about getting their share, because there is not that much to share out. But if the government spends as much as ours, in the neighborhood of 35 percent of GDP every year, and taxes each of us to the tune of 30 percent of GDP, then every citizen has a vital interest in making sure that he gets his share of the loot and minimizes his share of the taxes paid. So a big-spending government is dividing and conquering by supervising the squabbling over who gets what out of the government goodies. What a concept!
My question is whether it is possible, short of a complete meltdown, to get humans to dial down their demands and refrain from trying to blame other people for their problems, and making them pay!
The only possible strategy seems to be indirection. President Trump is a master of this. He has run on Making America Great Again, making Mexico pay for the wall, stopping China from robbing us blind. But all the while he has been lowering tax rates -- on corporations! -- and cutting regulations -- on businesses!
Whaat? So President Trump has been putting Our Money into the hands of eevil corporations and rich investors! There oughta be a law!
Maybe there is genius in the Impeach Trump thingy. Because if the Dems and their willing accomplices in the media are filling their channel with Trump Orange Head Bad, then they have no bandwidth left for attacking his economic policies. And politics only has enough bandwidth for about one-and-a-half issues.
What I want to know is if there is a possible politics that would be able to reduce the power and looting of government, whether we could persuade ordinary people that their economic interests lie in smaller government, and that it does nobody any good if we are all concentrating on making the other guy pay.
Maybe the only way is the Trump way. The only way to bring America together is to stop scapegoating each other and scapegoat somebody else. Anybody else, from the Mexicans to the Chinese to the Iranians. And don't forget the Fake Media.
But let's try to keep it short of a shooting war, OK fellahs?
Generally, of course, the leader does not put his project in quite those terms. Usually his justification for war is that we must act now before the enemy strikes us. He must arouse in his followers the natural fear of the tribe next door, that they might suddenly strike us in a dawn raid, kill all the men and rape all the women.
Another casus belli is that the other guys are robbing us blind. You can see that at work in everything from the justification of taxing and regulating corporations to the renegotiating of trade relations with China.
And what about the workers! They are being screwed by their greedy employers! And what about women that only earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by a man. And blacks, cheated since forever by racism.
And always, if "you join in our crusade" as the Les Mis chorus sang, there will be rewards: loot and plunder.
In domestic politics with an established ruling class, this program is effected by the tactics of "divide and conquer." You set different groups against each other, all the better to tax and dominate them. For imagine what would happen if men stopped fighting with women, and blacks with whites? Why, they, er, we might all join up and decide that it is time to loot and plunder the ruling class and put them all in jail! Yay!
Notice that if a government does not have much spending, then the people need not be too concerned about getting their share, because there is not that much to share out. But if the government spends as much as ours, in the neighborhood of 35 percent of GDP every year, and taxes each of us to the tune of 30 percent of GDP, then every citizen has a vital interest in making sure that he gets his share of the loot and minimizes his share of the taxes paid. So a big-spending government is dividing and conquering by supervising the squabbling over who gets what out of the government goodies. What a concept!
My question is whether it is possible, short of a complete meltdown, to get humans to dial down their demands and refrain from trying to blame other people for their problems, and making them pay!
The only possible strategy seems to be indirection. President Trump is a master of this. He has run on Making America Great Again, making Mexico pay for the wall, stopping China from robbing us blind. But all the while he has been lowering tax rates -- on corporations! -- and cutting regulations -- on businesses!
Whaat? So President Trump has been putting Our Money into the hands of eevil corporations and rich investors! There oughta be a law!
Maybe there is genius in the Impeach Trump thingy. Because if the Dems and their willing accomplices in the media are filling their channel with Trump Orange Head Bad, then they have no bandwidth left for attacking his economic policies. And politics only has enough bandwidth for about one-and-a-half issues.
What I want to know is if there is a possible politics that would be able to reduce the power and looting of government, whether we could persuade ordinary people that their economic interests lie in smaller government, and that it does nobody any good if we are all concentrating on making the other guy pay.
Maybe the only way is the Trump way. The only way to bring America together is to stop scapegoating each other and scapegoat somebody else. Anybody else, from the Mexicans to the Chinese to the Iranians. And don't forget the Fake Media.
But let's try to keep it short of a shooting war, OK fellahs?
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