Neoliberal Talking Points Are the Devil, Part One: How Ya Gonna Pay For It?

The following is part one of an ongoing ultra-listicle about how neoliberal talking points are trash. As the capitalists once again marshal their resources in the face of certain economic ruin, the fiscal argument against universal social programs—a sturdy political cudgel for two generations—bears highlighting first off.

To aid in educating us on how things are and how they ought to be, politicos are trained to deliver well-crafted talking points. Less attributable to linguistic artistry or good-faith liberal back-and-forth than clandestine corporate machinations, neoliberal talking points tend to demand docility disguised as conviction. They have become ubiquitous during increasingly long US campaign seasons. Officials and candidates spout their focus-grouped messaging on TV, and Very Smart People reinforce these non-ideas with non-analysis after cutting checks from the monopolists at Comcast and AT&T.

Thousands of hours of cable news airtime is devoted yearly to add legitimacy to neoliberal talking points. This free advertising is worth billions to the political establishment. Regular folks who believe they’re doing the good work of influencing the populace toward an achievable vision of the future disseminate the pabalum further via their social media networks. Far too often I fear we are serving corporate ends rather than (or at best, in addition to) confronting them.

Capitalists employ talking points to maintain their perceived legitimacy amid increasing evidence that capitalism is destroying us. The system’s agents of propaganda freely maneuver through the revolving door separating the public and private sectors, and blur the line by advising public interests from private consultancies. The same folks that make their names selling us fizzy sugar-water and fruit-flavored nicotine sticks design the messages that influence our political thought and action.

Talking points are a scourge. Here’s one specific example:

HOW YA GONNA PAY FOR IT?

Propagating the idea that a transition toward “small government” would lead to a renaissance of American freedoms, the Reagan administration slashed taxes early on. The conservatives’ Bizarro Gandhi gets credit from mainstream political quarters for using record defense spending to break down the Soviets and end the Cold War, but our own empire’s financial house was left ragged after he went all in on guns and emboldened the private sector to tend to our butter. Meanwhile, the GOP honed its message of fiscal temperance.

Sporting major fossil-fuel industry connections and a CIA pedigree, Reagan’s successor assembled a coalition to invade a former strategic ally. [Historical brief: Iran nationalizes oil — US doesn’t like — US befriends Saddam Hussein — US bankrolls Iraqi invasion of Iran. Later, Hussein grabs Kuwait’s oil — US doesn’t like — NATO pushes Iraqi forces out... Winners: Big Oil, defense contractors. Losers: NATO troops, Iranian/Kuwaiti/Iraqi civilians.] Meanwhile stateside, marginalized communities suffered directly due to inequitable revenue distribution, indiscriminate deregulation, and the ever-escalating War on Drugs.

Clinton gleefully scapegoated poor folks of color after charming liberals of all races with his soundtrack of easy-listening hits. Removing the incumbent with a 43 percent plurality in 1992, the erstwhile “first black president” successfully championed a major spending boost for state violence and legal slavery (#ToughOnCrime), and moved the Democratic Party to the right on tentpole entitlements as well as foreign policy. It’s fair to refer to the last decades of the twentieth century as a golden age of American dog whistle politics.

Dubya lost the popular vote but governed as though America had delivered a mandate. Following passing major tax cuts, his experts ignored intelligence that could have prevented 9/11, and used that epoch-shifting event to unleash the ultimate dog whistle. Behind the War on Terror, Bush accelerated the military industrial complex into a state of perpetual large-scale conflict, lying through his practiced Texan affect all the while.

He began by charging into a country largely unrelated to 9/11 to chase after another former US ally. [Historical brief: Soviets invade Afghanistan — Osama bin Laden trains Mujahideen vs. Soviets — US backs bin Laden — Soviet empire collapses. Later, bin Laden orchestrates 9/11 — US vows revenge — bin Laden hides — US invades Afghanistan — US kills bin Laden in Pakistan — war in Afghanistan continues... Winners: defense contractors, former Soviet states, capitalism apologists, heroin supply chains, the Washington Post. Losers: Afghan civilians, US millennials & zoomers, Muslim Americans, other brown Americans.]

Then the Bush administration doubled down. With their Iraq gambit, the warmongers thought they could make quick work of a convenient recurring bogeyman, earn Halliburton a huge windfall, and chafe Iran from both sides (#AxisOfEvil). A trillion dollars later the Pentagon was still mired in the region, while on the home front New Orleans had been left for dead, capitalism had propped itself up with magic money, and the politics of war had lost its luster.

After running as the anti-Bush, the actual first Black president empowered Goldman Sachs alumni to pull the $15 trillion ship back from the edge of oblivion. He compromised on tax reform, normalized drone assassinations, and legitimized the marriage between Big Data and the military industrial complex. Notably, in the kind of language that only lands smoothly if uttered by an especially skilled bullshitter, Barry vilified whistleblowers who risked their lives to reveal the deep roots of the surveillance state.

Though Obama left the Fourth Amendment on life support, the Affordable Care Act became the largest expansion of the social safety net since LBJ successfully whipped congressional coalitions from some of DC’s most venerated water closets. How quaint the passage of Obamacare feels now as leftists across the country invoke the spirit of FDR to save us from ecocide. Yet the millions of folks plucked from the clutches of death or financial ruin by this landmark legislation cannot be denied. Still, we rise.

Now, as a result of decades of neoliberal malfeasance, an unqualified criminal narcissist has been allowed to seize the presidency for his direct enrichment. He loafs around our house pushing regressive revenue schemes, erasing his predecessor’s modest improvements, nursing his fetish for strongman-style military pageantry, and (until now) averting geopolitical disaster by the narrowest of margins.

Sometimes I’m amused by the nakedness of the greed that undergirds the opposition to universal social programs. Other times my relative powerlessness to confront the elite as they deny their gluttonous behavior leaves me adrift in a sea darkness.

If congress shaves a few hundred billion dollars off the military budget (#GodBlessOurTroops!), reinstates an aggressively progressive tax code (#ClassWarfare!), and punches big capital in the mouth (#FreedomOfChoice!), every US resident could receive superior comprehensive health care — this is how America lives on, how humanity’s most recent attempt at achieving a perpetual empire confronts its inevitable slide into squalor with grace. Rich people can still be rich. They just won’t be able to casually throw the GDP of a small island nation at vanity-fueled power grabs. (More on that shortly.)

Good-faith proponents of capitalism claim it’s the best way to pull the masses out of poverty. Average folks prospering at scale portends a rosier path for capitalism’s long-term sustainability than wage stagnation and massive, accelerating inequality (duh). And yet all reasonable evidence from this late stage points to growing numbers of poor folks stateside, as our overall health and wealth decline. Instead of investing in us, Uncle Sam defends two massive private industries that siphon profits directly from our bodies in the guise of providing a public good.

This is what evil looks like. No system that sentences so many to unnecessary death can claim purity, or even absolution, for coming up with the tools that would’ve kept them alive had they been utilized.

Profit-driven health insurance must be abolished. The companies that develop our medicines and therapies require regulation commensurate with their great responsibility to maintain social welfare.

We’ve been sold a version of the world that says healthcare isn’t a basic tenet of the social contract, where government is self-deprecating and deferential to domestic capital in every endeavor except war. But healthcare is what a well-apportioned national government is made to address.

America can be anything we want it to be. Where once Uncle Sam busted monopolies and led massive expansions of the social welfare state, he now bankrolls Boeing, Amazon and other members of the military industrial complex, stuffing his pockets all the while. That’s our money. We must not let the propagandists fool us with dog whistles and doublespeak.

In an attempt to secure the awesome power of the presidency for himself, a man who built the base of his cartoonish fortune off Reagan’s deregulated Wall Street decided to chop down a few of his money trees, shake them upside-down really hard, and inundate us with slick marketing for three full months. Bloomberg was lauded as a serious contender by the liberal establishment because of his money, not in spite of it. The cognitive dissonance it required for talking heads to support this position while looking straight into the fourth wall without mentioning the free advertising they were actively providing—such a matter-of-fact acquiescence to American oligarchy—runs deep in establishment circles. As it turns out, greed and cowardice are frequent bedfellows.

Maintaining a comfortable living standard is more demanding and more expensive than ever. Average American workers are nearly twice as efficient as they were 40 years ago, while pay has remained level. And this wise guy just lit nine figures on fire with less self-awareness than the greenhouse effect as it roasted Australia’s bushland.

In the face of a pandemic the CDC and NIH are working with pennies, but the neolibs easily found some spare cash to pump into our zombie corpse of an economy.

“How ya gonna pay for it” is the ultimate troll.