Monday, May 28, 2012

Attacking Capitalism?




So Bill O'Reilly sets up the the latest Republican talking point by accusing the president of going after Mitt Romney by "attacking capitalsim."

No Bill, as usual you're wrong (though I suspect you know that). The president isn't attacking capitalism. That's a fake meme that the right is trying to put out there to convince the low information voters who watch your network that President Obama has some socialistic agenda to bring down capitalism as we know it.

No, what the president is doing is criticizing scum like Mitt Romney (and a good portion of the GOP) who use capitalism (and a a fair amount of government loopholes--socialism is great when it benefits you) to destroy the society for heir own gain and thus help ruin capitalism for everyone. Most people on the left, including Obama, would probably tell you that they're all for capitalism as long as everyone gets a fair shot at it and the people aren't financially raped for the profit of a few. In the world Mitt would give us, the people would be raped, pillaged and plundered and they'd be expected to smile while the violation was going on.

Now Bill, I undersand that the concept of a fair shot is a hard concept to understand for someone who won't even give his guests a fair opportunity to respond to question he asks (unless, of course, the answers given follow the company line). But try to understand.

Creatures like Mitt Roney ask us to trust them even though trusting them before helped us get into this problem in the first place. Much like you, Bill, they throw around easy terms, a sort of verbal slight of heand, that point low information voters away from the facts, directing them instead to the lies you and your kind wish to spread to help get your pals elected. You'll be happy to put the journalistic integrity you claim to have (when it's convenient) on hold to help out the party. What's a little spin in the "no-spin zone"?

Remember how you accused Sandra Fluke of wanting the public to pay for her contraception when that wasn't the case at all. A journalist holding true to his ethics woudln't have stated that. But it fit so well with the party line, didn't it? After all, if you are able to direct the attention of the low informaiton voters toward the "Sandra Fluke is a free-loding whore" freak show that blow-hards on the right put on, then the low information voters won't see the truth: That a resonable woman wasn't looking for a hand out but was asking that the insurance she pays for include contraception in the package.

That's the sort of game you're playing with the president right now. If you can convince the people who have no desire to research the issues (and no comment sense to understand them if they did), then you can lead them like sheep to believe that one of the least socialist presidents we've had is a socialist (or a Nazi, or Communist, or Kenyan, or a Muslim or whatever else is convenient to get the voters to believe this week).

The true irony of this latest meme by the right...well, there are in some respects two examples of irony here. First is that the charge that the president is attacking capitalism is the best the right has to offer when it comes to the Bain ads put out by the president's campaign. The truth is out there in painful detail and it does not reflect well on Romney (look away from the video Low Information Voters. Look! The president is criticizing capitalism!).

But the biggest irony is, using this ad to accuse the president of being critical of capitalism is like...well, it's as crazy as accusing Newt Gringrich of criticizing capitalism when his camp first raised the specter of Bain while he was a candidate for the presidency. In fact, his camp posted a pretty biting YouTube video that was all the rage in an attempt to prove why he would be a better president than Mitt Romney (which is a bit like being asked to choose between arsenic or cyanide. They'll both kill you but each by varying degrees). Where was all that hand waving and gnashing of teeth then about Newt Gingrich's fiendish agenda to kill capitalism? It didn't jibe with the right's message (plus, there were so many other actual reasons to dislike Gingrich) so it was never brought up in that context. Accusing a GOPer of wanting to bring down capitalism by criticizing it? Perish the thought.

But we can accuse people on the left of that desire because, after all, using your logic, Bill, there's nothing people on the left long for more than to live in a gulag, work their asses off and eat stale bread to survive. And heck, how convenient because, thanks to Republican policies and greed nearly bankrupting this country the past few decades, that might actually be the fate of most people in America. Including the low information voters subscribing to the nonsense people like you spread.