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Bronco Bamma vs Mitt Romney

Marxismo invertido

En artículo publicado en el Washington Post, Ezra Klein desvela la lógica de lucha de clases, pero en sentido distinto al del autor de El Capital, implícita en la narrativa resentida de Mitt Romney, reforzada después de su derrota en las elecciones, mediante la cual pretende explicar la sociedad americana como una dividida entre agentes activos y emprendedores, por un lado, y personas convenencieras y dependientes de apoyos gubernamentales por el otro, esto al justificar ante donantes a su campaña la dolorosa derrota, con el argumento de que el candidato Barack Obama ofreció "regalos" a los diferentes sectores del electorado a los que terminó por seducir; al hacerlo, Romney omite hacer referencia a su promesas de privilegios fiscales y regulatorios a potentados, que lo apoyaron más por interés que por convicción. De conformidad con esta ideología:

Politics isn’t a conflict between two reasonable perspectives on how to best encourage growth and high-living standards. It’s a kind of reverse-Marxist clash between those who produce and those who take, and the easiest way to tell one from the other is to see who they vote for.

Sobre este tema, Derek Thompson, en escrito publicado en The Atlantic, aconseja al excandidato republicano permanecer callado y permitir que las personas sospechen que es un plutócrata, en vez de abrir la boca y eliminar cualquier duda al respecto.

Capitalismo y sorpresa electoral

En un momento de sinceridad, Paul Ryan reconoce que los resultados de las pasadas elecciones presidenciales los tomaron por sorpresa tanto a él como a su compañero de fórmula Mitt Romney: 

The polling we had. The numbers we were looking at looked like we stood a pretty good chance of winning... So, when the numbers came in, going the other direction. When we saw the turnout that was occurring in urban areas which were really fairly unprecedented, it did come as a bit of a shock. So, those are the toughest losses to have -- the ones that catch you by surprise.

Al respecto, Pete Bilderback considera adecuado hacer el siguiente comentario sarcástico al político republicano, admirador de La rebelión de Atlas:

Here's the beauty of what happened to these guys: They were victims of the pure free-market capitalism they espouse. They got fleeced by people acting out of pure self interest and no regard for the greater good. Ayn Rand would be proud.

9-11, los primeros cinco minutos

Atlas para adolescentes

En entrevista para Rolling Stone, se pide a Barack Obama su opinión respecto a la novelista-filósofa Ayn Rand, objeto de culto, a veces no del todo declarado, de la derecha política más extrema en Estados Unidos y el resto del mundo. La considera una autora refugio de jovenes con crisis existenciales:

Rolling Stone: Have you ever read Ayn Rand?

President Obama: Sure.

Rolling Stone: What do you think Paul Ryan's obsession with her work would mean if he were vice president?

President Obama: Well, you'd have to ask Paul Ryan what that means to him. Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we'd pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we're only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we're considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity -– that that's a pretty narrow vision. It's not one that, I think, describes what's best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a 'you're on your own' society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.