What was it that made the US and UK, who both have slavishly followed the Randian model of creating a capitalist paradise, soon have to start shopping for the governmental equivalent of payday loans to finance basic services?  Could it be the feudal extremes of wealth and poverty that strain the social safety net and choke off public investment to further enrich an overclass of wealthy layabouts?  Could it be reckless and unpaid-for military adventurism?  Could it be the rampant anti-unionism that has gutted society’s bedrock, the strong middle class?  Could it be the dominance of the Murdoch press?  Nah.  The answer of course, is that “social cohesion” is going to have to be flushed down the toilet so the rich can keep up with the, uh, other rich.  The smart money is in riot gear and more prisons.

I think this explains why the economic right is doubling down so in its misinformation campaigns; they see trouble coming and are desperate to lay the blame anywhere other than where it belongs.  It started during the Bush years, when any fool could have seen that the upward transfer of wealth and incontinent military spending was going to create a fiasco; the government quietly, and later proudly, began creating a repressive infrastructure that would be needed to keep an increasingly two-class society from boiling over.  Of course, the multiple wars, the loaded, Nazi-tainted term, “Homeland Security,” the routine and savage attacks on dissenting politicians and members of the press, and the explosion of extrajudicial spying and detention called to mind der Fuhrer a bit too much, so ol’ Jonah Goldberg was at the ready with his farcical piece of nitwit propaganda, “Liberal Fascism.”  Why not?

Then, when the Bush economic policies produced just the disaster that any sentient being could have predicted, and no amount of wingnut prosecutors and rigged voting machines could stem the tide of popular revulsion at the theft that had been committed, Plan B was implemented after the 2008 elections.  Fox News hired essentially the whole propaganda arm of the defeated administration and gave Glenn Beck his chalkboard, and Liz Cheney, William Kristol, and Dick Armey, among others, fired up their newly minted government in exile to make sure that the most larcenous of their policies would be aggressively marketed to dumber Americans, most of whom worked in the media.

Since the elections of 2006 and 2008 had made clear the unwelcome fact that even No Child Left Behind hadn’t made Americans quite dumb enough yet to vote themselves into serfdom, they had to de-emphasize somewhat the gay-bashing and bible-thumping in favor of going all in for plutocracy, which was what really mattered all along.  Thus, the teabaggers were systematically riled up to equate government sanctioned theft by the wealthy from everyone else with “freedom,” and the handily packed Supreme Court was forced to fast-track its plans to tilt the playing field further toward the luxury boxes with the notorious and audaciously misnamed “Citizens United” decision.

Bringing up the rear, typically, was ol’ Texas, which rightly perceived that this book learning thing was getting out of hand, and had to rush through new “academic” standards for textbooks.  The wingnut charlatans on the board, some of whom had already been sent packing by the voters, had neither the time nor inclination to obsess over creationism, abortion, and such, and instead stuffed in such blatantly desperate measures as sanctifying Reagan, “free enterprise,” and the gold standard, a gesture that proved unintentionally revealing…   Who cares about murdering babies when money is involved?

Count on the right to leap on Moody’s threat  as the latest justification for further cutting taxes on the wealthiest 1% of Americans, while sticking the rest of us for more and taking away what measly services we still receive from them.  In fact, Rep. Paul Ryan’s little proposal does just that, while further increasing the deficit, to boot.  What would Moody’s think of that idea?  Better yet, what would Ingrid or Sven think?  Not much, I’m betting.