http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/yellow/35398/the-real-f-word-we-arent-allowed-to-usePaul Ryan and the GOP have proposed a budget that is so cruel and inhumane that it can only be indicative of the evil, underlying political forces at work; we are slowly lurching towards fascism. The reason that I deem the F word appropriate here is that the kind of authoritarian, undemocratic labor repressive tactics we've seen in many mid-western states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan and the budget cutting along with tax cutting for the rich and corporations can only be the consequence of a quickly advancing class conflict that will become uncontainable and highly destabilizing to our democracy. Democracies cannot withstand intensified class struggle; capitalist crisis pushes the ruling class into a repressive mode because winning the class war and defending profits is their real endgame in class society. As philosopherMax Horkheimer once said; "Anyone who does not wish to talk about capitalism, however, should also keep quiet on the subject of fascism." For Horkheimer, fascism was simply a means of perpetuating or upholding of capitalism by totalitarian, often violent, means. History has proven him correct before. He will be proven correct once again if US labor loses the current class war in which it is increasingly engaged.
Even the highly conservative Department of Homeland Security has warned that current economic distress is what is giving rise to the current proliferation of hate groups all over the US. The Southern Poverty Law Center has often repeated the claim that since 2001, the number of hate groups currently organized in the US has increased by 50%!! This is a chilling statistic and one that should be taken quite seriously. Reactionary violence is being encouraged by right wing media pundits like Glenn Beck who hysterically propound absurd conspiracy theories in the manner of Father Caughlin in the 1930s. There is a growing, if unofficial, connection between the fascist hate groups and the "mainstream" far right in the GOP/teabagger movement/FOX Newmedia juggernaut. The establishment right wing is openly encouraging the fascists with outrageous, unprecedented statements. The violence that has already occured as a result has neither tempered nor deterred the establishment conservatives.
National hysteria about "socialism" is being drummed up for political purposes at a time in our history when we are furthest from any such thing; taxes on the rich have never been lower and government never been less intrusive. But it is really the economics of this class war that will increase the likelihood of political instability. Proposed cuts in discretionary spending will not only fail to save sufficient revenue to reduce the deficit, it will destroy the current fragile recovery by starving the economy of needed effective demand and consumer spending. Economist James Cypher describes the effect of such budget cuts on the economy;
"The total effect of massive cuts at the state and local level in 2011 will be to withdraw funds in relatively labor-intensive areas such as education and health care. An estimated 500,000 local government employees are scheduled to be terminated in 2010 and 2011. To this group should be added another 900,000 public and private sector jobs currently sustained by the 34 states that will face the need to trim their budgets to accommodate falling tax revenues in fiscal years 2011 and 2012. The roughly 1.4 million threatened state and local layoffs could eventually have a much larger impact, potentially forcing twice that number or even more into unemployment. Even with the $26 billion in emergency one-year funding that passed the Congress in 2010, sizeable state and local layoffs and wage cuts will occur in fiscal year 2011. In September local government layoffs hit their highest rate in over 30 years."
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