Toles Rant- Mind games

Well, Tea Partyers! How are your newly elected friends doing with that deficit reduction agenda of yours? What?? Tax cut extensions that make the deficit BIGGER?? Trying to repeal the health-care law, when repeal would make the deficit BIGGER??? But, but, but! They furrow their brows in concern JUST THE SAME WAY YOU DO! That ought to count for something! Just not anything in the actual budget.

Crazy thought experiment. Suppose you were a really rich guy who, for rigorous "philosophical" reasons, didn't like the idea of progressive taxation all of a sudden. And just suppose that you not only were rich, but that your riches were mushrooming out of all proportion to what rich people had in anyone's memory. And suppose that your financial derring-do had shattered the national economy and left everyone else reeling. Now, you might think that eventually people could start casting a gimlet eye in your direction.

What you MIGHT do under those circumstances would be to find a DIVERSIONARY target for the hapless to focus on. The DEFICIT! And the VERY LIBERALS who would TAX YOU! Call them socialists and power-mad maniacs! Get the very people who are hurting stirred up against the very people who might tax YOU! A twofer! A Daily Double! Of course I'm not in any way suggesting that anyone would be as cynical as that. Just saying that if you thought you were electing people to cut the deficit and somehow they seemed strangely more interested in cutting taxes for the rich, yet again, one might pause for just one second, and wonder.... --Tom Toles


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/tomtoles/2011/01/friday_rant_mind_games_edition.html#more