Neoliberalism Also Hates the Truth

Ronald Reagan had difficulty telling the truth. Why? Because much of what he did was immoral and the rest idiotic. Take, for example, his violation of the Constitution.

"The charge has been made that the United States has shipped weapons to Iran as ransom payment for the release of American hostages in Lebanon, that the United States undercut its allies and secretly violated American policy against trafficking with terrorists....  Those charges are utterly false....  We did not--repeat--did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages, nor will we."
--President Reagan, television address, November 13, 1986

"... [I] was not fully informed on the nature of one of the activities."
--President Reagan, referring to the fact that money from weapons sales to Iran was diverted to the contras, November 25, 1986

"The simple truth is, 'I don't remember--period.'"
--President Reagan, responding to a question about when he authorized arms shipments to Iran, February 2, 1987
"A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages.  My heart and my best intentions still tell me that's true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."
--Reagan in a television address is forced to acknowledge "the facts and the evidence" uncovered by the commission that Reagan appointed to look into the matter, March 4, 1987
"I told you all the truth that first day after...everything hit the fan."
--President Reagan, June 11, 1987

Sure, he told the truth when he was caught lying. 

The same is true of his record of tax increases.  He couldn't face the fact that the Neoliberal economic theory didn't work; so he introduced the idea of "revenue enhancers" to replace tax increases. George Will actually approved of this sort of intellectual dishonesty.  Of course, Will aided and abetted Reagan's dishonesty.

More recently, Republicans have begun to accuse their opponents of doing what the Republicans are, in fact, doing. Cronon becomes a bully because independent news agencies and other take rightfully abject to their bullying of Cronon. As just one of the many examples.

Why do I bring this up? The other day, I suggested that Chris Rickert was an idiot. On further consideration, I have concluded that he is, in fact, someone with either a sketch grasp of reality or someone who, like Reagan, enjoys obfuscating and, like the Republicans, argues that black is, in fact, white.

A couple of days ago, in a column in which he insisted that the protesters are morally no better than the forces seeking to destroy workers, he wrote:

I admit I've been taking the protesters to task, though I don't necessarily oppose their aim. Mostly, I'm just temperamentally given to rooting for the underdog (in Madison, that would be conservatives), just as I suspect a lot of the louder protesters (especially those who don't belong to unions) are temperamentally driven by the need to be part of something bigger than themselves.

See what he did there? The protests aren't "liberal" Madison versus some besieged minority of Conservatives. Its workers versus Republicans dead set on destroying their incomes. He may "suspect" that a lot of the protesters are motivated by, what he sees as a base, desire to matter. But the fact of the matter is that almost all of the protesters are motivated by the desire to stop Neoliberals from destroying workers wages, which -- to be fair -- is "something bigger than themselves but that's actually a good thing.

In his column on letting the UW-Madison become part privatized and, I'd argue, eventually destroyed, he asserted

I say, let the cake-eaters have the UW-Madisons of the worlds. There are plenty of people out there like my wife who would succeed without them.

It's not clear who the "cake-eaters" are supposed to be, although the most likely candidates are the students, facaulty, and staff at UWM. The other referent here is, obviously, Marie Antoinette, who didn't say anything like that even though myth has it that she did. What he's done here  is to ignore that it is the Republicans who, in an orgy of salary cutting and budget slashing, are the the contemporary Marie Antionettes and the current students, faculty and staff the victims of their short-sighted budget slashing and related etc.

In just two columns he manages to recapitulate the worst of Neoliberal rhetorical flourishes. WSJ readers deserve better.