Digby takes a hard look at what Jim Bunning and Jon Kyl's stand in the face of millions of unemployed Americans might reveal about our shifting sense of morality.
"I am getting the same sick feeling in my stomach about this that I got when I watched the torture 'debate' unfold. This is yet another unraveling of certain pieces of the already threadbare social contract --- the reflexive moral consensus on cruelty and selfishness that we all teach our children and at least pay lip service to if not always live up to. Things like whether or not it's ok to torture --- or to let people flounder with no income at all during a serious economic crisis...
Up until now there was no question that it would be political suicide, much less morally wrong, to make massive numbers of unemployed, working and middle class workers, pay in order to make an ideological point. But with these incoherent tea partiers and nihilistic libertarians pulling the same kind of out sized influence the neocons did during the Great GWOT scare, this is what happens. We lose our moral consensus.
This is simple Randism, which is the real basis of Tea Party anti-government faux populism. They may not 'believe in' Wall Street bailouts, but they don't believe in unemployment insurance either.(And in return for no bailouts, they are ready to lift all regulations and constraints on business, while the average Joe gets the 'freedom' to starve.)
The biggest problem is that this foolish tea party ignorance is having the effect of normalizing the adolescent 'individualism' of the Ayn Rand cult beyond the boardrooms and estates of the Master of the Universe. The "parasites" are now anyone who has the misfortune to lose his or her job in the worst recession since the 1930s --- a recession that was caused by millionaire con men who are reaping big bonuses these days."
Digby's Hullabaloo: Teabag Poster Boys/3.2.10
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