I'm ODing on Noam today, I guess. I usually try to dismiss everything about the so called "tea party movement" but this quote from his appearance on Democracy Now is certainly interesting, mostly because of his take on the race issue.
“Grievances aren’t invented. I mean, for the American population, the last thirty years have been some of the worst in economic history. It’s a rich country, but real wages have stagnated or declined, working hours have shot up, benefits have gone down, and people are in real trouble and now in very real trouble after the bubbles burst. And they’re angry. And they want to know, ‘What happened to me? You know, I’m a hard-working, white, God-fearing American. You know, how come this is happening to me?’
“That’s pretty much the Nazi appeal. The grievances were real. And one of the possibilities is what Rush Limbaugh tells you: ‘Well, it’s happening to you because of those bad guys out there.’ OK, in the Nazi case, it was the Jews and the Bolsheviks. Here, it’s the rich Democrats who run Wall Street and run the media and give everything away to illegal immigrants, and so on and so forth. It sort of peaked during the Sarah Palin period. And it’s kind of interesting … that of all the candidates, Sarah Palin is the only one who used the phrase ‘working class.’ She was talking to the working people … they’re the ones who are suffering. So, there are models that are not very attractive.”
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