It's dawned upon Robert Reich that all them ig'nrant, gun-totin', Bahble-thumpin, never-went-to-Harvard-but-can-read-the-Constitution, AstroTurfin, TeaBaggin', 8/28-attendin', tri-corner-hat, hand-lettered-sign-totin' people, and their friends and families, are alllllll showing up to vote on Tuesday, and that Tuesday is just the beginning, not the end, of the process.
His contempt for all those little people is unabated, but his dismissiveness has, well, turned into open worry.
What if those cretins actually reassert the rights of the states, because they will also be voting in state legislators from their own ranks?
What if they disassemble the IRS?
And the welfare state?
What if they decide that (OMG! OMG! OMG!) they need not pay the salaries of academics at state universities who despise them, like Robert Reich, who assume that the legislature will just keep sending money, no matter how badly they act? What if they decide not to spend money on degree programs in Wimmen's Studies, Queer Sociology, Ethnic History Studies, Ebonics, or any of the plethora of useless/politically-correct liberal arts offerings and special offices that have supplanted useful things like Classics, Ancient Languages, Modern Languages, etc. OMG! OMG!
What if they disassemble the IRS? (Oops, did that one already, but it's worth repeating. If you take away the money and power from the ruling elites, they have to find honest work out in the real world...)
What if they break the umbilical cord between the large corporations and the Federal Government, especially the large banks?
What if they insist the Supreme Court be comprised of justices drawn from schools other than Harvard or Yale?
What if they insist that we face the reality that we can't have a viable government if we have porous borders?
What if they insist that people who aren't citizens can't vote? Or that felons shouldn't vote?
Reich attempts, one final time, to explain it away:
Under normal times ideas like these wouldn’t gain much public traction. Why are they now? Because of the continuing effects of the Great Recession. History has shown that people threatened by losses of jobs, wages, homes, and savings are easy prey for demagogues who turn those fears into anger directed at major institutions of a society, as well as individuals and minorities who become easy scapegoats – immigrants, foreign traders, particular religious groups. Were it not for their ongoing economic stresses, Americans wouldn’t be receptive to abolishing the Federal Reserve and the IRS, or believe government and big business were conspiring against them, or turn nativist and isolationist.
It's the old 'ignorant rabble' theory. No need to worry, after all, right?
Robert Reich has reason to worry. The world he has inhabited, where everyone holds at least an M.A. from an Ivy, where everyone transitions seamlessly from government to academia to corporate boards and back again, an endless life of influence and cash flow, with almost no accountability, is now about to change, irrevocably.
He thought Obama would finally set it in stone for him and his tribe.
He didn't count on another tribe getting itself organized, without permission.
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