Birthday Fundraiser Day Three: I Buried Paul...

...under an avalanche of praise today, despite being far, far away from my computer since early this morning.

And I did so because what he said sounded so familiar. So very, very familiar.

Ideology and Investment

OCT. 26, 2014

Paul Krugman

America used to be a country that built for the future. Sometimes the government built directly: Public projects, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, provided the backbone for economic growth. Sometimes it provided incentives to the private sector, like land grants to spur railroad construction. Either way, there was broad support for spending that would make us richer.

But nowadays we simply won’t invest, even when the need is obvious and the timing couldn’t be better. And don’t tell me that the problem is “political dysfunction” or some other weasel phrase that diffuses the blame. Our inability to invest doesn’t reflect something wrong with “Washington”; it reflects the destructive ideology that has taken over the Republican Party...

There are only so many ways for an amateur like me to run through the digital streets yelling that our modern house divided against itself cannot stand. That we cannot endure permanently half-Fox and half-free.

After awhile it really starts to feel as of you are going mad, or you're asleep and dreaming the whole thing. Or maybe you have fallen into a Philip K. Dick novel where you shout into a void which is not merely indifferent, but actively hostile to any attempt to point out these blindingly obvious truths.

I mean, who the fuck are all these millions of zombies gibbering insane bullshit at you as they smash everything around them flat? How the fuck can they even function day-to-day at the level of pathological denial necessary to remain a modern Conservative? And who are these smirking, billionaire sociopaths who underwrite and direct this vast, brain-dead mob? And how the fuck do the Very Serious People in our media continue getting away with expending such enormous effort denying that both the zombie horde and their wingnut paymasters even exist?

And then, every so often, having beaten your fists to a pulp against the Slow Tide Of Arrogant Stupid which is killing this country, someone like Krugman will pop up and say, "Don't worry. You're not crazy. I see them too."

And for a moment, even though the Slow Tide Of Arrogant Stupid is still advancing, you know for sure you are not alone. 

For that I am very grateful.