

Our Decadent Elites - nealabq
http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2014/02/18/our-decadent-elites/

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cafard
How fortunate that a blog at the Wall Street Journal and service as
speechwriter to US presidents does not qualify one to be a member of an elite.

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dfraser992
The irony of this is that Ronald Reagan, Peggy Noonan's favorite Rethug to
idolize and write hagiographic BS about, is responsible (in part) for the
messed up state of society (the 1% etc, 2008 - everything over the past 30
years that has lead America into its current quagmire). Reagan laid the
groundwork for blatant hypocrisy among the right to be acceptable.

Yes, an analysis of the actual actions of Reagan, etc would show he was really
more "liberal" than the BS artists who hold him up to be the epitome of
'conservatism' would like to believe, but what I'm talking about is the shift
in social attitudes - "Greed is good" etc - the _propaganda_ that the right /
authoritarians successfully use as a smoke screen to wreak havoc on the rest
of us, the global economy, etc. That mantra has only gathered steam over the
years and now America is reaping what it has sown. Reagan should have been
impeached for the Iran-Contra debacle, and by giving him a pass, a precedent
was established that finally lead to the Iraq war (and $3 trillion dollars
wasted on an illegal war - and no one who lead the West down that road will
ever be punished)

So once again, yet another hypocritical Republican "conservative" incapable of
taking responsibility for their actions. Yes, there are other factors in play,
but the veneration of Reagan makes me sick because it is a symbol of how
screwed up a society America is, contrary to its self-delusions. And now we
have Obama, Marxist liberal, who is busily turning the US government into the
harbinger of the New World Order (which the authoritarians on both sides are
going to love). Don't get me started on the hypocrisy level of Obama...

Yes, lots of hand waving generalizations. But I'm trying to get at some
abstract aspect of how societies can change. I suppose it was all inevitable,
given what we know of how empires collapse. I really don't see America
fundamentally recovering from any of this.

