Title : "I’ve been fretting lately about the state of mind of America’s capitalists."
link : "I’ve been fretting lately about the state of mind of America’s capitalists."
"I’ve been fretting lately about the state of mind of America’s capitalists."
"All these socialists coming out of the woodwork must have them in quite a lather. So I write today with some friendly advice for the capitalist class about said socialists. You want fewer socialists? Easy. Stop creating them. Every once in a while in history, cause and effect smack us in the face. The conditions under which the czars forced Russians to live gave rise to Bolshevism. The terms imposed at Versailles fueled Hitler’s ascent. The failures of Keynesianism in the 1970s smoothed the path for supply-side economics. And so it is here. As I noted recently in The Daily Beast, the kind of capitalism that has been practiced in this country over the last few decades has made socialism look far more appealing, especially to young people. Ask yourself: If you’re 28 like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congressional candidate who describes herself as a democratic socialist, what have you seen during your sentient life?"Michael Tomasky — Daily Beast columnist — writes in the NYT.
1. "The terms imposed at Versailles fueled Hitler’s ascent." I've never seen such a short, blunt explanation for Hitler that didn't blame Hitler and his supporters. I'm not saying the terms imposed at Versailles did not fuel Hitler's ascent, just that it's conventional to avoid giving Hitler a neat, unelaborated excuse.
2. The other day we were talking about something Andrew Sullivan wrote: "One simple rule I have about describing groups of human beings is that I try not to use a term that equates them with animals." Tomasky violates that rule with: "All these socialists coming out of the woodwork must have them in quite a lather." I didn't agree with Sullivan's rule, because we are animals and because (as we've seen with Tahlequah the orca) some nonhuman animals seem humane. But I do crack down on mixed metaphors, and it's cockroaches and rats that "come out of the woodwork" and horses that get in a "lather." That's a mixed metaphor, because the woodwork is in a house and a horse is not in the house. (But now I'm thinking about that David Sedaris story that has him and his sister looking at magazine photos of a horse in a house: "Amy leaned closer and pointed to the bottom of the picture. 'Look at the mud on that carpet,' she said, but I was way ahead of her. 'Number one reason not to blow a horse in your bedroom,' I told her, though it was actually much farther down the list. Number four, maybe, the top slots being reserved for the loss of dignity, the invitation to disease, and the off chance that your parents might drop by.")
3. Even though I don't accept Sullivan's broad rule, I do think one ought to be careful about characterizing your antagonists as vermin.
4. Tomasky has room to deny: He didn't say socialists were cockroaches/rats. He imagined "America's capitalists" seeing them as vermin. They're the wrong-thinkers. Those horses.
5. Is it capitalists who are upset about all the socialism talk happening inside the Democratic Party? I think it is (and should be) the Democrats themselves. I think what Tomasky wants is for nonleftists to support policies that moderate Democrats would prefer to enact without calling any of it "socialism." But if they can't, because they're too bland to win support in the present-day media environment, then there's an opening for more exciting characters like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and they will say "socialism," and that complicates the Democratic Party's effort to regain power.
6. I seriously doubt that Tomasky is trying to help out capitalists. It's more: He would like their help. It's kind of a protection racket: Support my people before worse people come along.
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