The Paul Ryan Story:
From Flimflam to
Fascism
By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist
April 12, 2018
Flimflam - Noun
1.nonsensical or insincere talk.
"I suppose that
you suspect me of pseudointellectual
Verb 1. swindle
(someone) with a confidence game.
"the tribe was
flimflammed out of its land"
Pseudointellectual -
Someone who pretends to be more intelligent than they are.
Definition
of fascism
1 often
capitalized : a political philosophy,
movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often
race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and
forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong
autocratic or dictatorial control
early
instances of army fascism and brutality
Why did Paul Ryan
choose not to run for re-election? What will be the consequences? Your guess is
as good as mine — literally. I can speculate based on what I read in the
papers, but so can you.
On the other hand, I
do have some insight into how Ryan — who has always been an obvious con man, to
anyone willing to see — came to become speaker of the House. And that’s a story
that reflects badly not just on Ryan himself, not just on his party, but also
on self-proclaimed centrists and the news media, who boosted his career through
their malfeasance. Furthermore, the forces that brought Ryan to a position of
power are the same forces that have brought America to the edge of a
constitutional crisis.
About Ryan:
Incredibly, I’m seeing some news reports about his exit that portray him as a
serious policy wonk and fiscal hawk who, sadly, found himself unable to fulfill
his mission in the Trump era. Unbelievable. Look,
the single animating principle of everything Ryan did and proposed was to
comfort the comfortable while afflicting the afflicted. Can anyone name a
single instance in which his supposed concern about the deficit made him
willing to impose any burden on the wealthy, in which his supposed compassion
made him willing to improve the lives of the poor? Remember, he voted
against the Simpson-Bowles debt commission
proposal not because of its real flaws, but because it would raise taxes and
fail to repeal Obamacare. And his “deficit reduction” proposals were always
frauds. The revenue loss from tax cuts always
exceeded any explicit spending cuts, so the pretense of fiscal responsibility
came entirely from “magic asterisks”: extra revenue from closing unspecified
loopholes, reduced spending from cutting unspecified programs. I called him a flimflam man back in 2010, and nothing he has done since has called
that judgment into question.
So how
did such an obvious con artist get a reputation for seriousness and fiscal
probity? Basically, he was the beneficiary of ideological affirmative action.
Even
now, in this age of Trump, there are a substantial number of opinion leaders —
especially, but not only, in the news media — whose careers, whose professional
brands, rest on the notion that they stand above the political fray. For such
people, asserting that both sides have a point, that there are serious, honest
people on both left and right, practically defines their identity.
Yet the reality of 21st-century U.S. politics is one of
asymmetric polarization in many dimensions. One of these dimensions is
intellectual: While there are some serious, honest conservative thinkers, they have
no influence on the modern Republican Party.
What’s a centrist to do? The answer, all too often, has involved what we might
call motivated gullibility. Centrists who couldn’t find real examples of
serious, honest conservatives lavished praise on politicians who played that
role on TV. Paul Ryan wasn’t actually very good at faking it; true fiscal
experts ridiculed his “mystery
meat” budgets. But never mind: The narrative
required that the character Ryan played exist, so everyone pretended that he
was the genuine article.
Flimflam - Noun
1.nonsensical or insincere talk.
"I suppose that
you suspect me of pseudointellectual
Verb 1. swindle
(someone) with a confidence game.
"the tribe was
flimflammed out of its land"
Pseudointellectual -
Someone who pretends to be more intelligent than they are.
Definition
of fascism
1 often
capitalized : a political philosophy,
movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often
race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and
forcible suppression of opposition
2 : a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong
autocratic or dictatorial control
early
instances of army fascism and brutality
—J. W.
Aldridg
The Paul Ryan Story:
From Flimflam to
Fascism
By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist
April 12, 2018
