Republicans. Is Your Paradise Lost?

Republicans.  Is Your Paradise Lost?

Let’s set the stage a bit here.  Go back many billions of years and imagine the scene.  It is after the angels, led by Lucifer, have challenged God in battle, and lost.  They have fallen to Hell, but are still rebellious and trying to decide what to do next.  One choice is to do nothing and just accept what has happened to them.  Another choice is to attempt another attack on God.  The third choice…  To find out what that one is, you must read John Milton’s Paradise Lost. 

Another point to make is that Milton gave human traits to the fallen angels.  As one reads these chapters, it is possible to think, “I know someone just like that fallen angel of Milton.”  This particular speech of a fallen angel is to be found in Book II, beginning in the middle of line 108.

               “On the other side up rose

Belial, in act more graceful and humane;

A fairer person lost not Heaven; he seemed

For dignity composed and high exploit:

But all was false and hollow, though his tongue

Dropped manna, and could make the worse appear

The better reason, to perplex and dash

Maturest counsel: for his thoughts were low;

To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds

Timorous and slothful: yet he pleased the ear,

And with persuasive accent thus began:”

Fast forward now to the speech that Paul Ryan gave to The Economic Club of Chicago this past week.  Most of the speech was the usual right wing radical fiscal nonsense, but then he concluded with some statements that need to be scrutinized. 

 “Sowing social unrest and class envy makes America weaker, not stronger.  Playing one group against another only distracts us from the true sources of inequity in this country – corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless.”  Really?  He discusses corporate welfare that the right wing has ensured will happen with their current fiscal policy, and the continued obstruction in the House of Representatives of any plans to control that corporate welfare, at the same time making it appear that it is the Democrats who are ensuring the continuation of corporate welfare.  All the while that same right wing obstruction guarantees that promises made to the powerless remain empty.  Marvelous spin on the class warfare the Republicans have been waging against the middle class.

He continues (Ryan, that is, not Belial) with the accusation that, “Those committed to the mindset of “shared scarcity” are telling future generations, sorry, you’re just going to have to make do with less.  Your taxes will go up, because Washington can’t get government spending down.”   It doesn’t seem to occur to Ryan that the bulk of American citizens are already in a situation of “shared scarcity” brought about by fiscal irresponsibility of the past 10 years.  Is he speaking directly to the top 1-2% of wealthy Americans that they will now have to also accept some “shared scarcity” because their taxes will go up?  To whom is he speaking here?  Sounds to me like it is the top 1-2% and not the rest of us.  The rest of us are already sharing scarcity.

Another marvelous paragraph.  “They are telling future generations, you know, there’s just not much we can do about health care costs.  Government spending on health care is going to keep going up and up and up…and when we can’t borrow or tax another dollar, we’ll have to give a board of unelected bureaucrats the power to tell you what kind of treatments you can and can’t receive.”  I guess Ryan has yet to recognize that there were 40 million Americans without health care of any kind, and unelected health insurance bureaucrats were telling people, “Sorry.  Your child has a preexisting condition that we just won’t cover.”  Our health care bill isn’t the greatest, but it is certainly an improvement over nothing.  The best bill would include a single payer system.

Ryan continues.  “If we succumb to this view that our problems are bigger than we are – if we surrender more control over our economy to the governing class – then we are choosing shared scarcity over renewed prosperity, and managed decline over economic growth.”  Well, there’s a corker!!  “…governing class…”?   Is this in response to the growing awareness that the Republicans are no longer capable of governing – but that the Democrats are?  Is Ryan trying to get out in front of this awareness by calling the Democrats the “governing class”?   If the Democrats are the “governing class”, what does that make the Republicans? 

Here’s the conclusion to these statements from Ryan:  “That’s the real class warfare that threatens us – a class of governing elites picking winners and loser, and determining our destinies for us.”  Again, to whom is he speaking here?  Certainly not to most of us who are well aware that the corporate interests in this country have already chosen who their winners and losers will be, and have determined that our destinies ought to be at their corporate direction.  It is not possible to gut public education, the social safety net, et al, and then pretend that there is not a nefarious intent. 

Going back to John Milton’s Belial, we all know that he was a fictional character, though brilliantly portrayed.  Would that Paul Ryan was fictional as well.  But he is not, and we must be aware of his ability, as exemplified in this speech, to “make the worse appear the better reason”, and not let the Republicans “…perplex and dash maturest reason.”