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Brooks' sentimental posturing does not convince me. There is absolutely no substance to it - he has the right target, but he has literally nothing to offer this target in the way of policy.
Of course, it would be nice if this kind of compassionate capitalism, where the poor are not harvested as machines to exhaust their brains in addiction and move coins around for the benefit of the managers of commodities, became popular. But it won't. The US right are so beholden to a totally fantastical ideology of free market fundamentalism that they have rendered themselves economically illiterate. Their belief in how capitalism works has been proven by its repeated implementation to belong on the same psych ward as soviet communism. They would have brought an even more extreme version of the austerity agenda that the UK Tories used to set back our recovery by years and years.
The GOP base shilled itself fake gold and dreams of death. They said the debt would lead to imminent disaster. The tea party tried to implement policies that would have destroyed the US economy - their insanity caused the downgrading of the US credit rating. The apocalypse was nigh - the fed/obama/reptilians/jews were conspiring to bankrupt us - EACH YEAR since 08 they predicted imminent hyperinflationary collapse of the dollar - anarchy on the streets. They believe they can sneer global warming out of existence. They started and lost 2 wars that they want to blame on the left. They presided over bloody carnage and destruction of the US empire. They started fighting imaginary communists from the 80's that existed in their heads. All that was left of their confused brand of corporate worshipping individualism was a deranged hatred of government, conspiracy theories and ruin. The right was responsible for more terrorism on US soil than any muslim, since 08 their militias and nutjobs have killed cops and been thankfully foiled in many planned atrocities.
Clinton left the largest budget surplus in history, and the Republicans pissed it away, literally squandered it all, on lost wars. There is footage of contractors in Iraq explaining how they BLOW UP armored trucks with rocket launchers in order to have more sent, charging the government for the pleasure.
They privatized so much of the military under their lunatic ideology. It was an obscene orgy of insider dealing and contracting. More soldiers committed suicide than where killed by the enemy, but who cares? Support the troops! We'll send them to die and not even bother to plan how to win the wars. Hannity has a charity event he wants you to donate to, just make sure you don't look too closely at the percentage that actually goes somewhere other than his pocket.
They can all go fuck themselves into irrelevancy.
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