Paul Krugman (who I often refer to as Krugsandra for his prescient though often ignored predictions) has a doom-and-gloom OpEd in The New York Times this morning. It’s today’s must-read…
It’s time to start calling the current situation what it is: a depression. True, it’s not a full replay of the Great Depression, but that’s cold comfort. Unemployment in both America and Europe remains disastrously high. Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited. And democratic values are under siege.
And in at least one nation, Hungary, democratic institutions are being undermined as we speak.
One of Hungary’s major parties, Jobbik, is a nightmare out of the 1930s: it’s anti-Roma (Gypsy), it’s anti-Semitic, and it even had a paramilitary arm. But the immediate threat comes from Fidesz, the governing center-right party.
Fidesz won an overwhelming Parliamentary majority last year, at least partly for economic reasons; Hungary isn’t on the euro, but it suffered severely because of large-scale borrowing in foreign currencies and also, to be frank, thanks to mismanagement and corruption on the part of the then-governing left-liberal parties. Now Fidesz, which rammed through a new Constitution last spring on a party-line vote, seems bent on establishing a permanent hold on power.
Fidesz is relying on overlapping measures to suppress opposition. A proposed election law creates gerrymandered districts designed to make it almost impossible for other parties to form a government; judicial independence has been compromised, and the courts packed with party loyalists; state-run media have been converted into party organs, and there’s a crackdown on independent media; and a proposed constitutional addendum would effectively criminalize the leading leftist party.
It sounds disturbingly like the Republican Party’s vision of America to me. Jobbik is Hungary’s Tea Party. Ultra-rightist with a paramilitary wing (the militia here in the US). They distract the media and the masses while the mainstream party erodes democracy from the inside.
They create gerrymandered districts, pack the judiciary with party loyalists and block the appointment of other justices proposed by the opposition. The GOP have their own state-run media in Fox News which effectively owns the cable airwaves. The rest of the so-called “Mainstream Media” is owned by the corporatocracy who are enthralled to the rightwing ideology of the “Free Market.” In America, we don’t need to crack down on independent media, the corporate powers just buy it up and shut it down. Much like they’re trying to do with the Internet. The same goes for the the Democratic party. The rabid right doesn’t need to outlaw them, they just corrupt them with billions of dollars of corporate cash.
It’s all falling into place. If the rabid right only had a Presidential candidate who didn’t act like he (or she) just fell out of a clown car, it’d be a real problem.
Looking at the Republican “rivals”, I am THANKFUL to have Barack Obama as President. His heart, his values, his basic decency are all in the right place. BUT his hands are tied. Unfortunately they were tied when we failed to give him a progressive Congress. Instead, he is saddled with a filibuster-everything-do-nothing Congress that battles him at every turn, while the people SUFFER. They don’t EVEN let him pass his own appointments! Forget about majority rule -now it’s 60 Senate votes – or else! It’s not Tea-publican gridlock -it’s Tea-publican sabotage. Heck, it’s Tea-publican treason….while the 99% BLEEDS. And then they try to pin the blame on Mr. Obama! These people have no shame, or else its been purchased by those who can afford to do so. In her final years, Grandma gets her meager Social Security check, and they DARE call it “socialism”. Give me a break -and Grandma too! Thankfully, Occupy Wall Street reminds us that PEOPLE -ordinary people- really DO matter: people who deserve a piece of the pie, but are pushed away from the table -while the rich become richer at our expense, and democracy goes to the highest bidder. INSTEAD of L-E-S-S government, L-E-S-S taxes on the 1%, M-O-R-E corporate welfare, and M-O-R-E painful cuts to those who can LEAST afford it ..we demand a government that WORKS FOR ALL OF US -NOT just for the rich! Mr. Obama: you STILL give us hope!