No way back

Perhaps we should just genuflect and cry hosanna when a Wall Street Journal editorial doesn't reflect the most mind numbing reactionary drivel available. Since Blog Simple is far too busy to contend with the aforementioned drivel, why, you may ask, are we about to contend with a fairly reasonable and lucid editorial, that by Thomas Frank?

Well, that's just the way we are around here. Why fight against the lunatic drivel that infests cable news, network news, the editorial pages across this great nation, not to mention the right wing echo chamber in blogland? It's a waste of time, we think, so most of our media criticism goes after the reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post. They're the truly dangerous ones.

Mr. Frank's closes the editorial with this:

If Barack Obama or anyone else really cares to know what I think, I will simplify it all down to this. The landmark political fact of our time is the replacement of our middle-class republic by a plutocracy. If some candidate has a scheme to reverse this trend, they've got my vote, whether they prefer Courvoisier or beer bongs spiked with cough syrup. I don't care whether they enjoy my books, or would rather have every scrap of paper bearing my writing loaded into a C-47 and dumped into Lake Michigan. If it will help restore the land of relative equality I was born in, I'll fly the plane myself.

God know why the WSJ would print something that rejects what they have been cheerleading for over the last thirty years. A momentary raptus, perhaps. But in it, none the less, Mr. Frank makes a basic error, what he wants to go back to is a plutocracy. The plutocracy enabled a middle-class republic after World War II in its struggle to defeat communism, it always maintained control, that is up until now. What we have now is a kleptocracy, unleashed from the bounds of anti-communism, contemptuous of the law, seeing the bureaucracy as a ripe field for their depredations and the military as their private toy.

During the short span of seven years (yes, they got started during Reagan, but they've only taken full control under Bush), they have made a return to a sane plutocracy unachievable, unless Obama really is a miracle worker. There's no reason to believe he is. There's no reason to believe that there is much left to work with in this country's bureaucracy, civilian or military, not to mention its political class. They've remained silent (with a few honorable exceptions) and learned to live with powers that have flaunted their contempt for the solemn oaths to 'support and defend the constitution' as so much bullshit. There ranks are swollen with people whose only loyalty is personal, and to the money they're stealing.

So, Mr. Frank may as well save his papers for posterity. There is no going back. Getting rid of the current kleptocrats will require the use of the powers that they themselves devised, that is, extra-constitutional means. That shouldn't be too hard, this current crop of would be Caesars lack any talent for ruling, they still believe in money, even as they act to remove its legal underpinnings. Their corruption will be their undoing, even if it takes a while.

But there is no going back.
(h/t Sadly, No!)