Romney's Question

The retiring Senator wonders where it all went wrong. Here are some ideas.

image via Facebook

by Ari Rutenberg

In a remarkable article in The Atlantic, McKay Coppins gives us a look inside his new Mitt Romney biography. He mentions that Romney has been asking himself the following question:  

What role had the members of the mainstream establishment—­people like him [Romney], the reasonable Republicans—played in allowing the rot on the right to fester?

Well, Mitt, let me take a stab at answering your question. With a very long sword. Though, as you’ll see Mitt, you really already answered your own question.

While it is clearly more complicated than this, the original sin of the “reasonable” Republicans that lead to the rot is one of the famous seven deadly sins: 

Greed.

Both that of the politicians who crave power, and that of the wealthy who will support anyone promising to make them richer.  

It takes its primary form in the lie that tax cuts for millionaires or billionaires will make life better for everyone. The truth is that they will make the wealthy benefactors of right wing candidates wealthier while impoverishing the nation financially, morally, and politically. And the truth is that protecting those tax cuts is more important than anything else because it will help you keep a job that makes you feel powerful.

What’s interesting, Mitt, is that you know this already. Coppins also wrote that you “sensed that many of his colleagues attached an enormous psychic currency to their position—that they would do almost anything to keep it. Job preservation, in this context, became almost existential. Retirement was death.”

This is the fundamental problem, and this is what allowed the rot to fester; an endless quest to keep the jobs that give them a sense of identity. Not because they cared about policy or people, but because they could not face the loss of their privileged positions. And they chose to manipulate a group of people they believed were too stupid to understand how things really work.

And again, Mitt, you recognized this. Coppins writes: “It struck Romney that, for all their alleged populism, Hawley and his allies seemed to take a very dim view of their Republican constituents.”

And it has been so for decades.  The first big lie lead to many others, big and small. Among many others, you and your “reasonable” brethren told your oft downtrodden and desperate constituents that:

• tax cuts for billionaires would trickle down and help them; 

• that sending their children to die in endless and costly wars in the Middle East would bring the Saudi perpetrators of 9/11 to justice and make the world a safer place; 

• that sacrificing manufacturing jobs for “global free trade” would make their lives better;

• that increasing access to deadly weapons is a solution to the gun violence that plagues our nation;

• and that what Jesus really cares about is abortion and military power, not helping the poor and healing the sick. 

To make them distrust your political opposition, you told them that:

• wealthy blue states and cities that generate the vast majority of American jobs and innovation and pay far more in federal taxes than they get back are fiscally irresponsible;

• that poor red states that produce almost nothing and take far more from the federal government are financially wise (not to mention that federal aid is evil despite your constituents relying on it to survive); 

• that big cities in blue states are violent wastelands, when in reality big cities in red states have far higher murder rates, drug addiction problems, and incidence of domestic violence, and far lower life expectancy. 

• that, because they did not support your endless wars and tax cuts, Democrats (meaning minorities, Jews, socialists, atheists and the gay mafia) hated America, and they hated you.

And there are so many others beyond this. Many volumes have been filled documenting the vast cornucopia of lies that have been spewed by “reasonable” Republicans in pursuit of their greed.

The “vast right-wing conspiracy” Hilary Clinton referred to when your “reasonable” comrades were accusing her of murder was in reality not an active criminal enterprise, but a tacit understanding among the “reasonable” right wing elite that any tactics that helped them win elections were permissible, even if they knew they were lying or hurting people, and even if said tactics undermined the legitimacy of American democracy. Sen. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz were smart enough to know that the mob riled up by the lies was too big and angry to confront with the truth.

But you knew this as well, didn’t you Mitt?

You said: “Do we weigh our own political fortunes more heavily than we weigh the strength of our republic, the strength of our democracy, and the cause of freedom? What is the weight of personal acclaim compared to the weight of conscience?”

Of course the answer is a resounding “yes” from your reasonable friends.

I want to be very precise, Mitt, and tell you that though greed is the original sin and primary source of the rot, there is also real racism, anti-semitism, chauvinism, and other various and sundry forms of bigotry and hate. But mostly all of it is about motivating voters so that they can continue to enrich their benefactors. The racism is used to make poor white people think they have more in common with rich people than minorities. This is obviously false. Poor white rural communities suffer from the exact same problem set that poor urban communities do: lack of jobs, drug addiction, domestic violence, food desertification, lack of education and transportation, abusive and often unresponsive law enforcement, and perhaps worst of all a lack of hope.

There is an argument to be made that the 90% marginal tax rates of the 50s were punitive. But to make the same argument about the 43% rates of the 90s or the 39% rate we have now is patently absurd. Its only purpose is to serve the greed and benefit multimillionaires and billionaires who feel that any form of taxation is theft.

Greed, Mitt, is what it is all about. What it has always been about. Greed is the original sin that lead to the rot. And now the rot is so pervasive that those who know better can do nothing but encourage it. Because all they have left are the jobs that make them feel powerful.

Read the latest for Banter Members:

"She Had Limited Value"

A Seattle policeman's mockery of a dead woman is far, far worse than you think.

Daniel Auderer, left, laughed over the death Of Jaahnavi Kandula

by Justin Rosario

Last week, the story broke of Officer Daniel Auderer’s inhuman remarks concerning the death of  Seattle resident Jaahnavi Kandula on January 23 of this year. Kandula was struck and killed by another police officer on their way to respond to an emergency call. Auderer arrived on the scene to evaluate the condition of the officer, specifically to see if they were impaired at the time of the accident.

If you’re not already aware of what happened during a conversation Auderer had the next day, CNN has the nauseating details:

In the footage, Auderer can be heard explaining how he thinks the victim was hit and then says, “But she is dead.” He laughs, apparently in response to a comment made by the person on the phone. “No, it’s a regular person,” Auderer says. Moments later, he replies, “Yeah, just write a check” and laughs again before adding, “Yeah, $11,000. She was 26 anyway,” incorrectly stating Kandula’s age. “She had limited value.”

Protests started within hours of this footage being released to the public, and rightly so. But something about the cruel and sadistic comments has gone unnoticed that makes them so much worse than anyone seems to understand.

“She had limited value.”

Full disclosure, I know people are really upset at the officer that actually killed Jaahnavi Kandula and want them punished but maybe direct that anger in the right direction. Were they speeding? Yes. But responding to an emergency where every second can mean the difference between life or death? We expect the police to do exactly that. And fire trucks and ambulances. They have to. 

Were they going too fast? Maybe? I do not know what is acceptable for law enforcement but I haven’t read anywhere that they were wildly out of control. Either way, if this was an unavoidable tragedy or reckless endangerment, what Auderer said later points to a far deeper problem.

To be clear, none of Auderer’s comments are acceptable in any way whatsoever. From the mocking laughter to the $11,000 price tag to “it’s a regular person.” All of that betrays a cruel indifference to human life unbefitting of a police officer tasked with safeguarding the public. It wasn’t even gallows humor, a sometimes necessary self-defense mechanism for dealing with the regular horror the police face on the job. Auderer was simply being a piece of shit.

But I want to focus on the part that caught my attention and why: “She’s 26 anyway. She had limited value.” Put aside the fact that Auderer mistook Kandula’s age which is actually 23. He thought she was 26 and that meant she had “limited value.”

This is an excerpt from this week’s Members Only piece. Get 50% off a Banter Membership and continue reading here. A Banter Membership gets you access to The Emergency Meeting Podcast, all premium articles, and exclusive member chat threads.