“awash with celebrities comparing President George W. Bush to Hitler.”
Since most “celebrities” are themselves card-carrying members of the 1%, the real message here is that the elite will not hesitate to cannibalize itself when it is locked inside the media echo chamber with no exits available, a sort of existential predicament that provides much material for sleazy gossip mags and the Op-Ed pages of the WSJ. We all know that the hyper-rich are notoriously self-involved, to the point that they actually believe that what they say somehow matters, when in fact it’s just theatrical bombast, along the lines of a drag show, or a catwalk in Milan. So people, as we observe the terrible wounds inflicted by the wealthy on themselves as they garrote each other with Bulgari necklaces, we should remember that while stupidity is certainly not reserved exclusively for the wealthy 1 percenters of the left or right, it is made much more obvious by the amplification provided by the tireless minions who write their press releases and letters to the editor.
The “they started it” argument is probably the weakest one in the book. Particularly when used by the side that holds all the aces.
Kristallnacht resulted in German Jews having their livelihood and freedom taken away. Is there one person in the one percent who is truly at risk of losing it all due to progressive outrage at income inequality?
The funny thing is that Perkins got angry about that accusation, not because of the association of Rolex with mindless conspicuous consumption, but that the brand he favors, Richard Mile, is far more expensive than Rolexes. Rolexes are what successful car salesmen wear, not billionaires.
Ok, so can we just go ahead and have the class war already? I’m genuinely asking if we can go ahead and get this whole shitshow over with… The comments in the WSJ piece are beyond disgusting, with every one of the “pro-Perkins” side screaming about the “fascist, communist (wait, how does that work AT ALL???) ‘left-leaning Marxists’ who don’t work hard enough to make themselves rich and just want to redistribute the wealth”… I try to be as accepting, rational, and non-violent as I can be, but holy fuck, I just want to shake the shit out of this entire country.
Liberal Vituperation Makes Our Letter Writer’s Point…The liberals aren’t encouraging violence, but they are promoting personal vilification…
Yeah, because the Nazis are well known not for their violence, but for writing mean things about people. (Have Perkins and the WSJ mixed up the Nazis and Mean Girls?)
Well, I say that people who write ridiculous holocaust analogies are child molesters, and if that upsets you, WSJ editorial staff, it just shows how right I am!
Reading through RSS via feedly, there’s no indication that the excerpted quoted bit ends, so I read the WSJ’s comments combined with Beschizza’s comments as though they were all the WSJ commentary and I was totally confused.
The irony is that we’ve been having it for a while. And the super-wealthy have been winning. People are getting called Nazis just for having noticed the fact and timidly suggesting that perhaps we should do something about it…
It is all projection. They accuse Obama of using power in the way that they dream of using power themselves.
The furious denunciations of Obama for using executive power in perfectly ordinary ways as ‘fascist’ stands in stark contrast to their silence when George W. Bush was setting up secret prisons and ordering the use of torture.
Lets take a look at Umberto Eco’s definition of Ur-fascism written in 1995, long before Bush or Obama took power 1. Which fits better, Obama or Bush?
The Cult of Tradition
The Cult of Action for Action’s Sake
Disagreement Is Treason
Fear of Difference
Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class
Obsession with a Plot
Pacifism Is Trafficking with the Enemy because Life is Permanent Warfare
Contempt for the Weak
Selective Populism
Transfers of will to power to sexual matters.
Newspeak
Read the whole thing, it describes the modern Republican party completely.
Figures that Murdoch would come down on the side of Perkins. He is in the same league.How pathetic that he and his WSJ editors just don’t get it. It is the 1% at war with the rest of us.
First they criticized the billionaires, and I did not speak out-- Because the billionaires were obviously getting by just fine. I mean, they were fucking BILLIONAIRES for Chrissakes.
It’s amazing that in some circles it’s considered even slightly appropriate to compare Kristalnacht to wanting to increase effective tax rates for the mega-wealthy to, say, something more than the 10-15% range. What I think is clear is that they simply do not understand how loopy their perspective is to the vast majority of all humans. And this is why if the class war ever does heat up, at least the reasonableness of the different sides’ perspectives will be quite obvious.
I have a hard time imagining someone who survived the horrors of Auschwitz reading about a proposed modest increase on the top tax bracket and screaming “my God, it’s happening again!!”
One thing I’d like to add is that I think the term “1%” has outlived its utility, if it ever had any to begin with. First of all, it can mean quite a few different things. Second of all, by some definitions, the lower end of the top 1% are really living a lifestyle that is much closer to what “middle class” means to most people, than the lifestyle lived by, say, the top tenth or 100th of the 1%. The top 100th of the 1% are alien life forms for all intents and purposes, the top tenth of the 1% are definitely very very wealthy, but there are many people in this group of “the 1%” who are not all that different than a solidly upper-middle-class lifestyle. If the masses want to win this “class war” it will be infinitely more useful IMO to get the folks with net worths of, say, in the several millions on OUR side, versus the side of the people worth hundreds of millions or billions.
