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Sunday, December 16, 2012

Tax Cuts Balanced With Entitlement Cuts Is Yet Another False Equivalence With A Republican Bias

Why is it "balanced" to endlessly repeat variations on a formula demanding Republicans must give up on tax cuts and Democrats must give up on entitlements when this translates to a reality in which Republicans and Democrats in Congress, most of whom are much richer than average Americans, would pay a bit more in taxes while middle class and poorer Americans, again both Republicans and Democrats but none of them in Congress, would get less support at the times they need it most? Why is the tax side presented as something Republican lawmakers are giving up, when both Republican and Democratic lawmakers are giving it up in fact, while the entitlements side is presented as something Democratic lawmakers are giving up when neither Republican nor Democratic lawmakers actually depend on them and when the people who do are both Republican and Democratic Americans? Obviously, the difference here is that Republican lawmakers are willing to lard themselves with tax cuts at the cost of the increased suffering of the majority of Americans of either party, and Democrats want to ameliorate the suffering of the majority of Americans of either party even when this means they themselves may have to pay a bit more to accomplish this. The rhetorical framing of this false equivalence of tax cuts and entitlement cuts along party lines renders invisible a profound difference between the sociopathic plutocracy of one party at its heart and the empathetic pragmatism of the other party at its heart, very much to the benefit of the sociopathic plutocrats.

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