07.28.11
Operation Annihilate
James K. Galbraith, author of the book — The Predator State — I reread multiple times a couple years ago has a web piece. It speaks about the nihilist mania of those now trying to bring down the US government through a default.
Galbraith makes understanding this intellectual anti-matter — the alleged Constitutional-loving Tea Party/GOP hard at work violating the Constitution which guarantees the US absolutely must not renege on its debts — simple.
What is going on in Congress at this moment already violates that mandate. It is an effort to subvert the authority of the government to meet and therefore to incur obligations of every possible stripe. It is an attack on the concept of government itself – as the “Tea Party??? by its very name would no doubt agree.
It therefore paints those deficit hawks who are using the debt ceiling to take budget hostages as enemies of the United States Constitution.
He explains who are the predators. Naturally, these are the people featured in his book — “resource magnates, media magnates, banking magnates.”
The others are those who become the legion, often featured in this blog as the ammo-gold-and-pemmican crowd.
“Others have blinded themselves to the role government actually plays in sustaining the advanced networks, human protections and social systems that make up our lives, and imagine that one can go back to the world of subsistence farming, church charity and credit from the corner store,” he writes.
Finally, Galbraith serves up some criticism for the phonies abetting all this in the mainstream media. He singles out Howard Kurtz as an example:
Howard Kurtz wrote in optimistic terms of the prospects for a deficit bargain: “But away from the cameras, even sharp-tongued politicians recognize the imperative of avoiding the fate of Greece. It is a sign of the times that the Kabuki players of Washington may take a bow simply for averting catastrophe.???
Kurtz did not say that the big Kabuki here was his own notion that somehow the United States might face the fate of Greece – a small and overmatched member of a currency zone it cannot control. He did not say that the catastrophe he fears – a default on US government obligations – was entirely the product of treacherous politics, abetted by an irresolute President who seems not to grasp the danger of allowing the Constitution to fail.
Galbraith makes it clear the President absolutely must raise the debt ceiling.
The entire thing is here. Go now.