The Formerly Unthinkable

Who'd've thunk it?

We are about to reach a point long (and until last week) considered unthinkable -- a failure to raise the debt ceiling, resulting in the federal government unable to pay all of our obligations.

The right wing continues to press the claim that this situation has been brought about because liberal social democracy is 'unsustainable.' The only hope, they say, is to give Reaganomics/supply side/trickle-down economics more time to work.

The liberal response, typically, is that trickle-down has had over 30 years to work and has been an utter failure. Which it has.

But a failure at what, exactly?

But of course!

What trickle-down has failed at is sustaining liberal social democracy! And in that the social/economic right wing has been wildly successful.

Consider the march of neoconservative history since Reagan:

• Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, so revenues don't keep pace and the remaining burden is shifted onto the middle and working class;
• Privatization of government services, adding profit share and therefore additional cost -- Medicare Advantage, multi-fold increases in defense & war spending, prison corporations, etc.;
• A neocon majority on the Supreme Court, giving us Bush v. Gore and Citizens United vs. FEC;
• Conservative talk radio and general media consolidation, creating uniformity in news reporting, opinion-forming and civic discourse.

In short, the right wing has increased the cost of Grover Norquist's 'beast' and made it impossible to defend and sustain in the long term.

And used control of mass media to define the terms of the debate, so that obvious, no-brainer and popular solutions (e.g., removing the FICA cap, having the rich pay their fair share, breaking up too-big-to-fail entities) are off the table.

The long con

Look back and see the long conservative game. We're standing at a transition: the end of the set-up, where the right wing has pushed liberal social democracy to the brink of the waterfall. With today's competing Reid and Boehner debt ceiling plans, the choice isn't between left and right solutions, but whether when we hit bottom we land in deep water, shallow water or on the rocks.

The next stage in the right wing's plan can be but one thing: the Ryan Plan or its equivalent, formalizing the dismantling of the New Deal and ushering in what they think will be Libertarian Fantasyland. Or Utopia -- which means 'no place.'