ABC Onine
Praise the Lord and pass the whiskey! The election of Barrack Obama to President of the United States marks the end of the toxic neocon dream – we don’t react to reality – we create reality. The Bush Administration has been the most grotesque in US history. The foxes had finally taken over the hen-house. It was bound to end in tears, and so it has. To use some Bushite vernacular – it has been the mother of all clusterfucks.
I cannot recall a single redeeming feature of the Bush Administration, let alone three. The littany of policy disasters is mind boggling both in extent and all-encompassing range. Begun by stealing the 2000 election, to the cronyism of putting Monsanto in charge of the EPA and Halliburton in charge of the administration. Deficit creating tax cuts for the uber-wealthy – the golden boys and girls of the ponzi financial schemes and scams. Two ill-advised and botched invasions which have done nothing but breed support for Al Q’aida and run up trillion dollar budget deficits. Hurricane Katrina. The failure to plan for energy efficiency, preferring instead to wage war on oil rich dictatorships under the guise of spreading democracy and liberation, all the while enriching the coffers of Halliburton and Bush’s oil cronies. The cultivation of Christian Fundamentalists within the Administration and lobby industry while undermining the fundamental principles of the US constitution in the name of an apocalyptic Never-Ending War on Terror.
All finished off with the mother of all financial distasters when the ponzi schemes collapsed – products of the great freemarket experiment allowing the proliferation of unregulated financial systems that no-one really understood. The undoing of which almost resulted in a global meltdown, narrowly averted only by massive injections of liquidity from the public purse.
No doubt the challenges facing the Obama administration are monumental and no doubt Obama will fall short of people’s expectations. But as one commentator put it, there has been a change in chemsitry – too subtle to measure on any grid, but with profound long term effect. I think he will have a steadying and restorative influence. He possesses a noble demeanour – a refreshing change from the arrogance, ignorance and ignominy of the last eight years.
Yet, at this moment, I welcome the death of the neocon fantasy. Game over. That creaking sound you hear is the prevailing paradigm from the time of Ronald Reagan shifting to a neo Keynesian era.
Nor do I shed tears for the Bushites and their local acolytes. Rupert Murdoch and his tame tabloid attack dogs, Howard and the Howardians, the obsequious punditariat and countless other spotted Herberts who looked the other way in return for prestige and easy money leached from the blood sweat and tears of world’s less fortunate.
Good riddance.
God bless America!
Filed under: Big Picture, Economics, Politics, Barrack Obama, Bushites, Neo Keynesian
Another triumph for de-regulated free-market capitalism. A must view for all those who believe that the pinnacle of human existence is an economy based on consumerism.
Paul Keating is talking more economic sense than any of our current crop of pollies. He gets better with age.
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