I realize I'm doing a little bootlegging here, but we've just elected a pathological liar, a tax cheat, a freeloader, a defrauder of employees, and way too many gullible Americans are looking to this con-artist showman expecting he's going to be their savior and turn back time and tide for them. Thus, I'm hoping George will forgive and approve, likewise for the Guardian.
It would make for a ludicrous movie, but pissed off Americans, an impotent out of touch Democratic Party, along with an apathetic public who's forgotten that a healthy democracy demands an informed and engaged public - have made sure that our future will be witnessing our government get battered and who knows how badly dismantled before the Alt-Right is through steamrollering our traditional values. The Kochs and other oligarchs will see great returns on their diligent investment in the hysterical Alt-Right PR fabrication machine which has been dedicated to dumbing down, race baiting, fear mongering and enraging our public. While everyone is busy with those contrived distractions we continue allowing our environment, that we depend on for everything that nurtures our lives, to continue being damaged and destroyed at an ever increasing pace. The tragedy is beyond words. Let George Monbiot give you a lesson in how we got here.
How a ruthless network of super-rich ideologues killed choice and destroyed people’s faith in politics
The events that led to Donald Trump’s election started in England in 1975. At a meeting a few months after Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative party, one of her colleagues, or so the story goes, was explaining what he saw as the core beliefs of conservatism. She snapped open her handbag, pulled out a dog-eared book, and slammed it on the table. “This is what we believe,” she said. A political revolution that would sweep the world had begun.
The book was The Constitution of Liberty by Frederick Hayek. Its publication in 1960 marked the transition from an honest, if extreme, philosophy to an outright racket. The philosophy was called neoliberalism. It saw competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. The market would discover a natural hierarchy of winners and losers, creating a more efficient system than could ever be devised through planning or design.
Anything that impeded this process, such as significant tax, regulation, trade union activity or state provision, was counter-productive. Unrestricted entrepreneurs would create the wealth that would trickle down to everyone.
This, at any rate, is how it was originally conceived. But by the time Hayek came to write The Constitution of Liberty, the network of lobbyists and thinkers he had founded was being lavishly funded by multimillionaires, who saw the doctrine as a means of defending themselves against democracy. Not every aspect of the neoliberal programme advanced their interests. Hayek, it seems, set out to close the gap.
