As if he did not do enough to damage the American economy
and hurt the middle class doing it, Mitt Romney is adding insult to injury. He
is accomplishing this by pursuing a double lane narrative. One lane defines
success as being the accumulation of wealth anyway you can, even if you hurt
other people in the process. The other lane is to tell those that were hurt
something to the effect that what happened to them was due to their laziness,
their lack of imagination and the low expectation they have of themselves.
Now that his story -- which he defines as being a success
story -- has come to light, the world knows that Mitt Romney has accumulated
wealth by swooping down like a vulture on ailing American companies. He cut them
up into small morsels, laid off their workers -- most of who were of the middle
class, -- sold the morsels to foreign countries, and sold what is left of the
carcass to local junkyards or international ones. But Romney was not alone
doing these things, as they had been an American business model since the
advent of globalization a few decades ago.
As it happens when a critical mass is reached, the American
economy nearly collapsed because the Romney pattern was being duplicated by too
many other players. Slowly but surely, the crisis was transforming the economy
from one of production that was balanced by consumption to one of little
production and a very high rate of consumption. The result has been that the
population could not find enough locally made products to buy, so it turned to
the consumption of foreign made goods. A vicious cycle was triggered whereby
more American companies were pushed to the brink, inviting more vultures of the
Romney kind to cut them to pieces, which brought still more American companies
to the brink. With the near collapse of the economy, the laying off of workers
became epidemic, and the rate of unemployment went up as a result.
This was the time that the governance of America was
passed from one administration to the other. Now under the leadership of Barack
Obama, the response of the government was to do what an emergency response team
normally does in such circumstances. It extended a helping hand to those who
got injured through no fault of their own. In the meantime, President Obama did
what he could to mend the economy and get the people back to work as soon as
possible. But given that the damage to the economy was more severe than anyone
had expected, it was deemed it will take a little more time to reach a
satisfactory rate of employment.
And while all this was happening, the twists and turns of
the drama were unfolding somewhere else. It is that Mitt Romney had decided he
wanted to challenge the President in the upcoming presidential election.
However, rather than recognize the part he played in the tragedy which put so
many people out of work, he added insult to injury. He did what he did in a way
that was nowhere near being subtle enough to smooth the cruel edges. What he
did, in fact, was to cite the example of people who started their own
businesses – perhaps in good times or even in bad times – as he scolded the
people who continued to accept help from the government rather than go out and
start a business of their own.
Needless to say the reaction was: What's that again, Mitty
boy? You want everyone in America
to go into business for themselves? If this happens and every adult is in
business, who will you recommend that these business people hire to work for
them? Will they be robots? Or will they be monkeys from the Planet of the Apes?
Come off it, man and be reasonable. Not everyone was created to be an
entrepreneur, let alone be the kind of vulture capitalist that can live off the
flesh of those he decimates and not feel guilty about it.
You did it, you're happy, enjoy the flesh but other than
that lower your rhetoric because there are many people out there who enjoy a 9
to 5 kind of lifestyle. They don't mind working for someone else because they
cannot bring themselves to worry about other matters. So who the hell do you
think you are, telling these people they should be able to live their dream
only if they are willing to start a business of their own? Can you, Mitt
Romney, grasp a point of this complexity? Or is the point so alien to your way
of thinking, it is impossible for you to assimilate it in your thought
processes?
Until we get answers to these questions, it is worth
mentioning another matter that is related to all of the above. Yes, it was a
touching moment when Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, called on his mother to
join him on the stage while campaigning in Florida . But when the sentiments wore off,
people began to realize they were conned into believing in something that does
not make sense when scrutinized with a dispassionate eye. It has to do with
Ryan saying that his mother is on Medicare now and so was his grandmother. And
these are the reasons why he would not change Medicare, he claimed.
But his grandmother is now dead, and his mother is so rich –
having been in business and still cashing in from it – that she could do
without Medicare. Thus, the Ryan presentation was an exercise in deception, a
stage act of make-believe in a literal sense.
And this fits nicely with the Romney concept of being
successful by any means you employ that will allow you to get away with it.
Shame on you both.