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Reading this recent column by Paul Krugman, it occured to me that the neo-conservative movement that began with the Reagan administration thirty years ago had finally drifted so far to the right that it's now on the extreme left: anarchy. As Krugman recounts, the self-evidently nonsensical approach to government espoused by the neocons (Elect me to govern because I hate government as much as you do!) has been predicated upon "starving the beast." The "beast" in this view is a government that taxes the wealthiest at higher rates in order to ensure the lowest rungs of the ladder are a little above homeless despair and starving children (e.g., school lunch programs). Stop funding government (by reducing the highest tax rates from 72% to 28%, as Reagan did) and it'll HAVE to cut popular programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and so on.
Except it didn't turn out that way. Nobody in Washington has the cojones to cut these programs, which everyone depends on (including all those senior Republicans). So the U.S. has essentially been borrowing to keep feeding the beast all these years.
I was going to wax philosophical about how anti-government government is the very definition of anarchy. Washington paralysis, the obvious goal of the Republican party, will result in chaos. (Trivia question: What's the only major city in the world to have had an anarchist government?) But I've just come across this excellent article, where Cenk Uygur lays it out very well, showing the essential flaw at the heart of the American political system that very few are talking about: it's a con game.
Analyst after analyst expresses their dismay over the fact that the Democratic party seems unable to get things done, even with their political mandate. But as long as they need huge amounts of money for re-election, and the bulk of that money comes from corporate sponsors (a bad situation that will only worsen after the recent Supreme Court decision allowing unlimited corporate funding), they don't represent voters, they represent companies. No mystery. The voters are merely by-standers observing the process.
Trivia answer: Barcelona.
