In Case of Rapture This Mandate Will Be Unfunded

The final battle has been joined.

In a piece of political framing that is almost so familiar and unimaginative it’s yawn-inducing, George W. Bush “flatly ruled out raising payroll taxes” to guarantee the solvency of Social Security.

But this time there’s more than the usual “no new taxes” bone thrown to the Red State bozos.

More ominously, it is Bush’s trumpet call to line up his legions in the ultimate assault on the Democrats and their precious New Deal.

He won’t fix Social Security. He wants to end it — for the most sordid and self-serving motives of political advantage.

As Paul Krugman and others have noted, the so-called Social Security crisis is a hoax. The program is over-funded, probably through 2052, thanks to the burden of extra payroll taxes currently shouldered by the middle class. After 2052 - or maybeeven later — a minor tweaking of payroll taxes would fix it.

Taxes that Bush is now pre-emptively ruling out.

Privatization alternatives to hiking the payroll tax all founder on the fundamental reality that the trillion or two that as jerked out of the system for private accounts has to be replaced so bennies for the upcoming crop of retirees can be delivered — either through income tax hikes on the same people gutting the Social Security fund to feather their private nests (good luck) or deficit financing (a.k.a. taxing the unborn).

What we have is a garbage crisis designed to generate garbage debate in order to implement garbage policy.

Why is Bush being such a mean, stupid dick on Social Security?

The answer cuts to the heart of Bush’s political philosophy and his unholy pact with Red State voters.

On the most basic level, the Social Security debate is just the latest club used by the Republicans to beat the Democrats with.

Responsible Democrats who care about Social Security and understand the math and trade-offs know the wisest, most equitable way to fix it — goosing payroll taxes.

Therefore, igniting the Social Security debate a decade earlier than necessary is merely the easiest way to crucify the Democrats on the “tax and spend” cross that Bush and Karl Rove have been nailing us to for the last four years with stunning success — the one, together with the matching “abortion” cross, that they have booked us on for the next four years as well.

Bush and Rove believe they have a unique window of opportunity to cripple the Democratic Party irrevocably by pushing a Social Security debate when the Democrats are electorally weak, disoriented, and supremely vulnerable to exploitation on the ultimate wedge issue.

Now is not a good time for Democrats to have something they genuinely love and cherish — like Social Security — in the hands of the Bush administration.

Because Bush and Rove have no interest in the actual merits and real-world fixability of Social Security.

The Social Security debate is just another act in Bush’s Theater of Pain starring helpless Democratic puppets.

They can do it because we care too much.

We’re hostages of the Bush administration, to be cynically manipulated for our allegiance to our special interest, just like fundamentalist Christians.

Rove yanks the fundies’ chain on abortion to make sure they show up in anxious droves on election day.

Rove yanks our chain on Social Security to make sure we are humiliated as the impotent tax and spend party…

…and the GOP masquerades as the party of fiscal sanity that must be kept in power to prevent the crazy Democrats from spending the country into the ground…

…even as it pisses Social Security and government finances down a bottomless hole.

Last I noticed, the Republicans have the upper hand in both chambers of Congress.

So any attempt to resist Bush on Social Security will involve empty struggles for the timid souls of Lincoln Chaffee and Olympia Snow that will probably end with a botched “reform” of Social Security. Demoralized Democrats to return from our spiritual Munich a la Neville Chamberlain with furled umbrella — and a photo of them with Bush at the “historic” Rose Garden bill-signing ceremony — so they can hit the campaign trail with the claim that they “saved” Social Security.

Mission Accomplished, so far as Bush and Rove are concerned.

That’s why Bush and Rove want to screw with Social Security.

Not because it’s necessary or good.

But because they can!

And people on the left are coming to the realization that screwing the Democrats — rather than some mystical faith in free markets, ownership, and personal choice or remaking government in a conservative image — is what the Republicans are all about.

It’s a satisfactory end in itself, delivering control of the government, power, and wealth to the crew that screws.

There is always the dream that the Red State goober will remove his finger from his nose, his head from his ass, and figure out he’s getting jobbed by some GOP politicos who don’t care about the state of the nation, its finances, or his retirement.

Dream on.

Red voters and Bush understand each other perfectly.

They know people are getting jobbed:

Other people.

People they fear, misunderstand, and dislike.

In Fallujah, in Iraq, in blue states, in inner cities, in minority households.

To them, the whole point of elections is controlling the federal government so that when they line up people to get jobbed, you’re at the back of the line, not at the front.

George Bush symbolizes the Red State belief that responsibility can always be evaded, obligations can be shrugged, and consequences can always be outsourced to some other chump — just as long as your guy has his hand in the till and finger on the trigger.

At its basest level it’s good old reactionary white-flight middle-finger politics.

Its ultimate, aggressive expression is Rapture theology — the idea that secular society is irrelevant and immoral, and any political activity that doesn’t contribute to the imminent end-times scenario is not only useless; it’s ungodly.

So the Democrats’ half-assed attempts to fix the world and achieve some modicum of human progress is simply an affront to the Almighty and a profane, if futile, interference with the wonderful things He has planned for us and vouchsafed to hip-to-the-jive heartland fundies.

They view us with a mixture of disgust and derision as we dance obliviously before the Golden Calf of liberal democracy that the Almighty is about to smite, just as they look forward to the rewards He will soon shower on them preferentially in true GOP trickle-down fashion for their true faith.

And the federal government should be put into the proper hands so it won’t serve as a distraction or roadblock for the red crusade of self-righteousness, self-interest, and self-delusion.

As President, Bush pretends he’s going to try and solve the country’s problems — and the reds pretend they believe him.

It’s a sham. Results and accountability are irrelevant.

You might have noticed that being right on Iraq — the biggest government fiasco in the last forty years, and grounds of an anti-Bush landslide in any country that takes democratic accountability seriously — didn’t do a lot for us in the elections.

Bush looking like an idiotic, addled mutt in the debates didn’t help us.

When Red States said they take values or George Bush’s character seriously, they really said they don’t take good government — or what happens to the government — seriously.

It was all a nod and a wink conspiracy to get those ridiculous elections, with those quaint ideas of public debate and accountability, out of the way so George can fulfill his holy compact with the reds…

…to destroy that liberal beast, the federal government, from within…

…while pretending to be its master and protector.

I don’t think we’re going to teach the red staters to love Social Security. They’re ready to drink the extra-strength “ownership society” and “Social Security isn’t going to be there for me anyway” Kool-Aid.

They elected George W. Bush so he would deal with us for them and they wouldn’t have to listen to our self-involved nattering for four more years.

So I predict all we’ll get from those pickup truck populists is the back of their hand as Social Security is partially privatized and the costs of transition shifted far enough down the road to guarantee both red state indifference and the discrediting and collapse of social security when the horrified post 2042 generation is asked to foot the bill for our fecklessness.

Heavenly Rapture may be iffy, but Armageddon, at least in its financial sense, is just around the corner.

Of course, Bush is interested in the votes of the reds, and he’s a believer in destroying the legitimacy and credibility of the federal government.

Not because he views it as a genuine threat to popular freedoms or righteousness on this planet, but because the federal government is at best a potential or actual impediment to the God-given right of the rich to enjoy and increase their wealth and prerogatives undisturbed.

Social Security represents a precious political and financial resource for Bush, to be plundered for its political as well as financial capital.

Bush will use the no taxes meme to pound the Democrats politically…

…while the rich exploit privatized Social Security as an avenue to wealth to be stripped of its redistributive elements, turned into a vehicle for wealth protection, and converted into a channel for private enrichment.

I hope — against hope, and the calculations of Karl Rove, a smart, ruthless fellow who I have a feeling has been looking at this opportunity a lot more closely than anybody else in America — that a roar of informed, non-partisan outrage will terrify the Bush administration and force it to back down on Social Security.

I opened the window just now — heard some angry grumbling on the Left, but it might have just been trucks downshifting on the boulevard.

Maybe there will be more noise later. I hope so.

Let’s face it.

I’m not optimistic we’re going to come up with the Magic Bumper Sticker Slogan that will save Social Security.

I love Social Security for its redistributive essence, its efficiency, its common-sense compassion, and the immense social and financial assistance it renders not only to seniors, but to their children who otherwise would bear unaided the burden of looking after aged parents.

It’s a great program. And the GOP is trying to exploit our love for it, even as they gut it.

I’m not going to propose a solution.

But I think we have a problem.

Maybe we don’t own the issue of Social Security.

Maybe Social Security owns us.

Copyright 2004 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.