[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by dead_battery

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.

Agreed. My biggest beef with George Bush II is the Republicans got greedy when they took over the Legislature in 2002 elections and totally, utterly, mercilessly abandoned the "compassionate" part of their conservatism. "Compassionate Conservatism" of the 1990s was built on immigration reform, fair and balanced spending reduction (i.e. not T.E.A. party gutting proposals like the last few years), health care reform, and more centrist social policies based on right-shifting morality. However, the Conress thwarted Bush II's Immigration Reform proposals THREE FUCKING TIMES, absolutely SHIT on healthcare reform several times, and escalated the police state to unprecedadented levels on their Nixonesque paranoia about Jihadists and Occupy protestors. I miss the days when the Republicans at least paid lip service to the majority of Ameircans through their crypto-Compassionate shit.

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.

You get an AMEN from me!

Their belief in how capitalism works has been proven by its repeated implementation to belong on the same psych ward as soviet communism.

exactly.

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.

I know, its so fucking embarrassing, again, what happened to the Compassionate part? See, they only invented the image of Compassionate Conservatism to play good-cop-bad-cop with the villainous image that was the Newt Gingrich era.

The GOP base shilled itself fake gold and dreams of death. They said the debt would lead to imminent disaster.

No, they've managed to entirely infiltrate and take over the machinery of American government. Simply put, Obama campaigned on change and it was as hypocritical as George Bush II campaigning on Compassionate conservatism. The past five years HAVE NOT ONLY BE A CONTINUATION OF THE BUSH POLICIES (CORPORATE BAIL OUTS AND SUBSIDIES, WAR WAR WAR, DOMESTIC POLICE STATE, UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS OF MASS DEPORTATION, THE LARGEST PRISON INMATE POPULATION IN AMERICAN HISTORY EVEN JUST BY PROPORTION LET ALONE VOLUME)

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.

Correction. The US directly funded and instigated the terrible "drug wars" going in Mexico the past few years. We've been bombing Yemen, Pakistan, Kenya, Somalia, routinely for the past decade (shhhh, the news doesn't want you to know that we're technically at war with a dozen countries ) We let Israel attack Lebanon and then Syria to fight US wars by proxy.

Clinton left the largest budget surplus in history, and the Republicans pissed it away, literally squandered it all, on lost wars.

Well, lets be honest, a quarter-trillion isn't that much money in the scheme things. Plus, that surplus was built entirely on the economic exploitation we call "globalization" so the US was just beginning to start making all kinds of money pimping the world, that is, until China stepped up and say, "Hey player, we got money too yo!"

They privatized so much of the military under their lunatic ideology. It was an obscene orgy of insider dealing and contracting. [

Military has always been largely privatized, they just were more obvious with it in Iraq with all those "contractors".

More soldiers committed suicide than where killed by the enemy, but who cares?

That is true, but ironically it still wasn't more than the national average for Americans

They can all go fuck themselves into irrelevancy.

I wish it were true, but again, the past five years have essentially been Bush II, not Obama. The guy has a fucking NOBEL PEACE PRIZE and is blowing shit up around the world, has a fucking Federal Court approved HIT LIST! Lord have His mercy

The reality is that Americans are generally center-right, and that is why we've had more Republican leadership at the local, state, and Federal level then we have had Democratic or truly Independent. As fucked up as the GOP is, they manipulate people because socially and morally America is center-right, and the hypocritical GOP loves to pretend they are a moral party, and hide their crimes behind feigned sincerity.

However, at least Brooks is one of the few conservatives to openly call that shit out.