by Bill Kavanagh: I can certainly understand that we’ll have differences of opinion over how to move out of the economic morass we’re in. I think Paul Krugman and other economists are correct that more must be done by government to end the recession. Some will cling to less government intervention in the financial system than seems necessary to me. Others may not think we should spend as much stimulus money on our infrastructure, health records modernization, green jobs, high speed transit, and other keys to a 21stcentury economy as I think we must. What I can’t understand is the know-nothing, obstructionist, hatemongering and name-calling that passes for political opposition within the Republican Party these days. That Rush Limbaugh and his ilk would suggest that they’d rather see the President fail in his efforts to revive the American financial system and economy than watch government intervention succeed is not simply wrong, it’s crazy.
I spent some time this weekend listening to reports from around Africa and Europe and from domestic sources around the United States on the economic downturn and how it’s affecting people everywhere. This isn’t a political game. The number of people globally who are hurting and yes, dying, because they can no longer make a living, see a doctor, buy food, or pay rent is truly staggering.
While the economic meltdown and recession is hurting our economy badly, the effect it’s having globally is truly frightening. People who already were living on the edge in developing countries are now in personal free fall. Political systems that needed stability to put down democratic roots are threatened around the world. The threat that tyrannical leaders who espouse fascism will use this desperation to their own ends is increased exponentially every day that the crisis continues.
Yet here in our country, we still see a ridiculous level of posturing to do nothing by influential leaders in the opposition who know better. When Richard Shelby and John McCain actually say on nationwide television that we should let major banks fail, you know there’s a new level of hypocrisy and disingenuousness afoot. They are both smart men, who would, if the shoe were on the other foot, be dealing with the banking crisis themselves.
So when I see them actually challenging the Obama Administration to do nothing about events that would surely lead to the end of our financial system and the beginning of total chaos in the world economy, I have to now consider them marginal figures, without credibility or moral stature. I have to conclude that Frank Schaeffer is right about the leaders of the current Republican Party: that they are either pandering to a base of absolute rubes who are buying the crap that Limbaugh, Coulter, and a small band of haters who pretend to be religious are still doling out— or they are intentionally sabotaging the country in order to prove that the other party can’t run the government.
Neither option is acceptable to civil society in the current circumstances. It’s time to start calling these guys out.
(This post is also available at Bill's Big Diamond Blog)
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