Krugman: Kansas on My Mind

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" Zepp " <zepp

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 07:41:31 -0800

 

 

Krugman: Kansas on My Mind

 

 

<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/opinion/25krugman.html?hp>

 

 

 

Kansas on My Mind

By PAUL KRUGMAN

 

Published: February 25, 2005

 

all it " What's the Matter With Kansas - The Cartoon Version. "

 

The slime campaign has begun against AARP, which opposes Social Security

privatization. There's no hard evidence that the people involved - some

of them also responsible for the " Swift Boat " election smear - are

taking orders from the White House. So you're free to believe that this

is an independent venture. You're also free to believe in the tooth fairy.

 

Their first foray - an ad accusing the seniors' organization of being

against the troops and for gay marriage - was notably inept. But they'll

be back, and it's important to understand what they're up to.

 

The answer lies in " What's the Matter With Kansas?, " Thomas Frank's

meditation on how right-wingers, whose economic policies harm working

Americans, nonetheless get so many of those working Americans to vote

for them.

 

People like myself - members of what one scornful Bush aide called the

" reality-based community " - tend to attribute the right's electoral

victories to its success at spreading policy disinformation. And the

campaign against Social Security certainly involves a lot of

disinformation, both about how the current system works and about the

consequences of privatization.

 

But if that were all there is to it, Social Security should be safe,

because this particular disinformation campaign isn't going at all well.

In fact, there's a sense of wonderment among defenders of Social

Security about the other side's lack of preparation. The Cato Institute

and the Heritage Foundation have spent decades campaigning for

privatization. Yet they weren't ready to answer even the most obvious

questions about how it would work - like how benefits could be

maintained for older Americans without a dangerous increase in debt.

 

Privatizers are even having a hard time pretending that they want to

strengthen Social Security, not dismantle it. At one of Senator Rick

Santorum's recent town-hall meetings promoting privatization, college

Republicans began chanting, " Hey hey, ho ho, Social Security's got to go. "

 

But before the anti-privatization forces assume that winning the

rational arguments is enough, they need to read Mr. Frank.

 

The message of Mr. Frank's book is that the right has been able to win

elections, despite the fact that its economic policies hurt workers, by

portraying itself as the defender of mainstream values against a

malevolent cultural elite. The right " mobilizes voters with explosive

social issues, summoning public outrage ... which it then marries to

pro-business economic policies. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve

economic ends. "

 

In Mr. Frank's view, this is a confidence trick: politicians like Mr.

Santorum trumpet their defense of traditional values, but their true

loyalty is to elitist economic policies. " Vote to stop abortion; receive

a rollback in capital gains taxes. ... Vote to stand tall against

terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. " But it keeps working.

 

And this week we saw Mr. Frank's thesis acted out so crudely that it was

as if someone had deliberately staged it. The right wants to dismantle

Social Security, a successful program that is a pillar of stability for

working Americans. AARP stands in the way. So without a moment's

hesitation, the usual suspects declared that this organization of staid

seniors is actually an anti-soldier, pro-gay-marriage leftist front.

 

It's tempting to dismiss this as an exceptional case in which

right-wingers, unable to come up with a real cultural grievance to

exploit, fabricated one out of thin air. But such fabrications are the

rule, not the exception.

 

For example, for much of December viewers of Fox News were treated to a

series of ominous warnings about " Christmas under siege " - the plot by

secular humanists to take Christ out of America's favorite holiday. The

evidence for such a plot consisted largely of occasions when someone in

an official capacity said, " Happy holidays, " instead of, " Merry

Christmas. "

 

So it doesn't matter that Social Security is a pro-family program that

was created by and for America's greatest generation - and that it is

especially crucial in poor but conservative states like Alabama and

Arkansas, where it's the only thing keeping a majority of seniors above

the poverty line. Right-wingers will still find ways to claim that

anyone who opposes privatization supports terrorists and hates family

values.

 

Their first attack may have missed the mark, but it's the shape of

smears to come.

--

 

 

Election 2004

The Triumph of the Swill

" The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost

duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation.

It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our

nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation

of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national

life. "

Adolph Hitler, My New World Order,

Proclamation to the German Nation

at Berlin, February 1, 1933

 

 

Not dead, in jail, or a slave? Thank a liberal!

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

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