Shill and Sham
A shill for a US House Speaker; a sham of a US political party.
January 18
A friend texted, “I broke out in a sweat, yesterday.”
Why the sweat… yesterday?, I asked. He replied, “Three reasons and 1 observation:
1.Looming Debt Ceiling Debacle;
2.IRA funding held hostage and pretty much the last two years of Biden/Congress social legislation;
3.Selling the public on picking its collective pocketbook, aka “reforming” Social Security and Medicare, in order to fund the 1% life style.
Observation: Guess the 2017 2.3 trillion dollar tax cut was not enough to bring America to this inflection point.” (1)
That’s a curious euphemism, I mused. An ‘inflection point?’ Isn’t that where the butterfly’s wings are pinned prior to embalming? Where the direction of the curve bends away, hence altering our expectation(s)?
Memo to self: Postpone OOC (‘out of country’) travel plans indefinitely. The rest of the globe despises us. Not a good time to travel as an American unless one prefers ocean cruises where you don’t get off the boat.
Seriously, do you blame them?
If the US refuses to pay its obligations and global markets tank — even for a moment —over half the world, those lacking sufficient sovereign funds and forced to trade with US dollars, will experience trouble.
The question for Africa this week in Davos was where and which economies to sacrifice.
‘Half the world’ was not doing so well before the US debt obligation debacle. Regressive government social policy (UK) and/or retreat from generating progressive policy (UK, US) had been normalized.
“America’s polarizaion in the 2020s created another tipping point — this for the United States internationally. Partisan spectacles during the pandemic (as the summer 2020 Pew polls underscored) undermined the country’s international standing as a democratic model and international authority on public health. Our inability to get our act together on most major policy issues (the ‘fifth risk’ — ref. Michael Lewis, ed. — of incompetence and the failure of project management) hindered the projections of American soft power, essentially the power of our example. As a result, we reduced our overall global competitiveness with rising powers such as China.”
-Fiona Hill, There is Nothing for You Here, (2021)
“The irony is that the MAGA movement has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of sinister globalists (if any exist) in making America the opposite of great. Right now the world really is laughing at us, although it’s terrified, too. America is still the essential nation, on multiple fronts. When the world’s greatest economic and military power essentially can’t even get a functioning government up and running, the risks are global.”
-Paul Krugman, “Making America the Opposite of Great,” New York Times, January 6
Of course, this impacts global determination in addressing climate destruction and inequality, a fact that eludes the shill/sham America calls occupants of “the People’s House.”
I replied to my friend:
The ‘problem with George Santos’ is the normative non-reckoning going on — another distraction, a new bed-time story for America.
‘Speaker’ McCarthy is not the cause.
A good shill is an accomplice.
January 17–19
Notes
1-https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/28/tax-cuts-trump-gop-analysis-430781
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