Planet of the Plutocrats -- as reported on by visitor-observers Paul Krugman and E. J. Dionne Jr.

The famous Elizabeth Warren video that has "Lying George" Will apoplectic with lies. (Hey, it's what he does.) If E. J. Dionne Jr.'s column today were to cause Lying George's brain to explode, well, it couldn't happen to a more deserving fellow.

"[The] remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent . . . tells you something important -- namely, that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called "economic royalists," not the people camping in Zuccotti Park. . . .

"So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth."

-- Paul Krugman, in his NYT column today,
"Panic of the Plutocrats"

"My colleague [George Will] has brought out his full rhetorical arsenal to beat back a statement [by Elizabeth Warren] that he grants upfront is so obviously true that it cannot be gainsaid. Will knows danger when he sees it."

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in his WaPo column today,
"From Elizabeth Warren, the proper case for liberalism"

by Ken

First, an incident. A sniveling pile of puke named Patrick Howley, an assistant editor of the American Spectator, not only admits but brags about having "infiltrated" the 99 Percent Movement's Saturday demonstration at the Smithsonian on Saturday, and after deriding his fellow demonstrators for, well, their law-abidingness, he seems to have single-handedly gone berserk and provoked violence and the usual police overreaction. He wound up getting pepper-sprayed for his, um, heroics, and he applauds his pepper-sprayers. Imagine what orgiastic fantasies he might be having if the cops had resorted to waterboarding!

A colleague on a listserv where this story was passed on pointed out the obvious kicker: If the Right had gotten hold of a story where they could claim that people on our side had done something of the sort, the uproar from the Noise Machine would be deafening. However, the brain-rotted Youth of Republicanism have now so thoroughly established their "right" to lie, cheat, and steal in their "activist" pursuit of new lies to spread about their enemies that not a whimper is sounded, however outrageous their behavior becomes.

It seems hardly worth adding "however dishonest" their misreporting becomes," because, as I keep pointing out, the Right has now long since achieved the seemingly impossible task of neutralizing truth. Or worse than neutralizing -- to the loonified Right (the only kind there seems to be these days), truth itself has become the enemy, and the ruthlessness with which they seek to extinguish it is breathtaking.

Which brings us to today's lesson, courtesy of those throwback champions of jouralistic reality Paul Krugman and E. J. Dionne Jr.

Krugman begins his column today (here's the link again) by noting that the OccupyWallStreet protests "have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent," drawing the conclusion I've quote at the top: "that the extremists threatening American values are what F.D.R. called "economic royalists," not the people camping in Zuccotti Park."

Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police -- confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction -- but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced "mobs" and "the pitting of Americans against Americans." The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging "class warfare," while Herman Cain calls them "anti-American." My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them.

Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor and a financial-industry titan in his own right, was a bit more moderate, but still accused the protesters of trying to "take the jobs away from people working in this city," a statement that bears no resemblance to the movement’s actual goals.

And if you were listening to talking heads on CNBC, you learned that the protesters "let their freak flags fly," and are "aligned with Lenin."

Professor K goes on to cite similar instances of plutocratic rhetorical hysteria, like the denunciation last year of President Obama's ultimately tepid and futile support of the so-called Volcker rule which would have limited federally guaranteed banks from engaging in crazy-wild speculation at our expense, and the current right-wing jihad (PK calls it a "campaign of character assassination") against Elizabeth Warren.

Not long ago a YouTube video of Ms. Warren making an eloquent, down-to-earth case for taxes on the rich went viral. Nothing about what she said was radical -- it was no more than a modern riff on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s famous dictum that "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society."

But listening to the reliable defenders of the wealthy, you’d think that Ms. Warren was the second coming of Leon Trotsky. George Will declared that she has a "collectivist agenda," that she believes that "individualism is a chimera." And Rush Limbaugh called her "a parasite who hates her host. Willing to destroy the host while she sucks the life out of it."

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees -- basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny -- and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny. Anyone who points out the obvious, no matter how calmly and moderately, must be demonized and driven from the stage. In fact, the more reasonable and moderate a critic sounds, the more urgently he or she must be demonized, hence the frantic sliming of Elizabeth Warren.

Professor K comes to rest with the second half of the quote I've posted at the top:

So who’s really being un-American here? Not the protesters, who are simply trying to get their voices heard. No, the real extremists here are America’s oligarchs, who want to suppress any criticism of the sources of their wealth.

(I can't resist mentioning, since PK has brought up the subject of "pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent," that it's a red-letter day for the Washington Post's designated financial dolt Robert J. Samuelson -- no relation, remember, though most everyone assumes otherwise, to the great economist and pioneering economics teacher Paul Samuelson -- who has suddenly noticed, in a column called "The backlash against the rich," that there has been a "stunning" increase in American economic inequality and that, astonishingly, Americans are suddenly holding it against the rich, or at any rate that infinitesimal segment of richies he says we nonrich folk think of as "undeserving" rich (not to be confused with "deserving" richies like Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey). Oh, by the end Robert J has rationalized and temporized and weaseled and two-stepped his way around any suggestion that any fault might lie anywhere except with the envying unrich, but the mere fact that he has publicly acknowledged not just an inequality gap but a "stunning" one is pretty stunning.)

E. J. DIONNE JR. TAKES ON HIS "DISTINGUISHED

COLLEAGUE," THE UNSPEAKABLE "LYING GEORGE"

The Warren-bashing ravings of the unspeakable "Lying George" Will have produced an even more direct response from fellow Washington Post columnist Dionne, who -- as he so often does -- camouflages his intentions with that dagnabbed gentility and unflappable even-temperedness of his, in this case referring to Lying George as "my distinguished colleague" and writing:

Will is a shrewd man and a careful student of political philosophy. I am a fan of his for many reasons, but more on that in a moment. In this case, he demonstrates his debating skills by first accusing Warren of being “a pyromaniac in a field of straw men,” and then by conceding the one and only point that Warren actually made.

Here's how E.J. characterizes Warren's point:

The declaration heard ’round the Internet world came from Elizabeth Warren, the consumer champion running for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. Warren argued that “there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own,” that thriving entrepreneurs move their goods “on the roads the rest of us paid for” and hire workers “the rest of us paid to educate.” Police and firefighters, also paid for by “the rest of us,” protect the factory owner’s property. As a result, our “underlying social contract” requires this hardworking but fortunate soul to “take a hunk” of his profits “and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

And as E.J. points out, Lying George begins by freely conceding the point:

“Everyone,” he writes, “knows that all striving occurs in a social context, so all attainments are conditioned by their context.” Indeed. He gives us here a rigorous and concise summary of what she said.

And then, says E.J., while erroneously accusing Warren of setting fire to straw men, he "introduce[s] his own straw colossus," piling on atrocity upon atrocity that, as it happens, Warren never said, or implied. Although E.J. is too gracious to say it as bluntly as I will, this is not only possible but expected from Lying George because he has devoted himself to the extermination of truth, thereby establishing himself as the journalistic godfather of truth-fucking scumbies like James O'Keefe and now Patrick Howley. And what would cause them to think that if lying your puking guts out is okay for the sainted Lying George, it's not A-OK for their toxic selves?

"What Warren has done," says E.J.,

is to make a proper case for liberalism, which does not happen often enough. Liberals believe that the wealthy should pay more in taxes than “the rest of us” because the well-off have benefited the most from our social arrangements. This has nothing to do with treating citizens as if they were cows incapable of self-government. As for the regulatory state, our free and fully competent citizens have long endorsed a role for government in protecting consumers from dangerous products, including tainted beef.

He's not done yet. You remember that elaboration he promised of why he's a fan of Lying George? It's time:

Will, the philosopher, knows whereof Warren speaks because he has advanced arguments of his own that complement hers. In his thoughtful 1983 book “Statecraft as Soulcraft,” Will rightly lamented that America’s sense of community had become “thin gruel” and chided fellow conservatives “caught in the web of their careless anti-government rhetoric.” He is also the author of my favorite aphorism about how Americans admire effective government even when they pretend not to. “Americans talk like Jeffersonians,” Will wrote, “but expect to be governed by Hamiltonians.”

So it's only natural that E.J. should "close by offering words of admiration -- for him, and for Elizabeth Warren." I'm guessing this sent Lying George's already-elevated blood pressure soaring up into the exploding-brain zone. Could it happen to a more deserving fellow?

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