Ted Rall for August 10, 2020

The Patricians have a nearly religious opposition to helping people… people should help themselves!

They were afraid they wouldn’t have an indentured populace to buy the stuff and keep them patrician.

The fall of the USA did not happen in a day, the Republicans have worked on it for decades.

The contemporary US has a lot in common with the late Roman Republic, both predatory expansionist empires, both heavily militarized, both plutocracies with a veneer of democracy and a rigged voting system, both with a massive gap between rich and poor legally as well as materially, both with a feckless senate little concerned with the common people, both with a constitution and institutions badly in need of reform, both with a decrepit and corrupt political system and class, but Trump’s no Julius Caesar, though he has Caesarian ambitions.

The deficit that was created by the Patricians grabbing all the denarii for themselves.

Warning: serious comment ahead: The economic answer to this, and to most deficit-flummery, is Modern Monetary Theory (#MMT), as laid out in Stephanie Kelton’s brilliant book “The Deficit Myth”, currently high on non-fiction bestseller lists.

A book for our time (and very easy to read): https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/stephanie-kelton/the-deficit-myth/9781541736207/

Later, some right-wing populists ate Theodore.

Today’s “Patricians” do not know the difference between assets (e.g. a healthy, secure, safe, well-educated workforce, clean environment, etc) and liabilities (e.g. ideological political policies [oversize military, subsidizing retrograde energy, etc] that add no measurable value to the nation’s GDP).

The patricians only care about the deficit when they are not in power. Using it to prop up an economy to claim it is the greatest ever? That is fine to them.

The Grouchy Old Pricks don’t say a word about the deficit when it comes to the military and tax cuts for the rich. Consumer spending drives the economy. While wasteful consumption is the cause of major environmental problems I’m not wasteful when I pay for my house, utilities and food and I do my best to minimize my impact on the environment. Damn fools!

Populists want to stimulate the economy but are stymied by intransigent economic elites and their servants who fit into some definition of ‘patricians’ (given Ted Rall’s oft demonstrated Binary Definition Disorder, I have little doubt that politicians from BOTH Sides are “patricians”, just like their uber wealthy “masters”)?

I expect Ted Rall defines populists, for the purposes of this ‘toon, solely as Bernie Sanders supporters — and maybe he throws in some self-identified Democratic Party members, in his more charitable (lucid) moments.

But let’s take a look at post-Reagan populist groups (pre-Reagan populism is useful to review for historical perspective, but has little if any direct relationship to our current era.

Left of center is Sanders/Occupy Wall Street; I would argue Green New Deal (me); Yang guaranteed income advocates (I place myself here also); people who advocate for repeal of Citizens United to be replaced by funding Presidential elections majority-if-not-solely w/taxpayer pool money; state elections for both national/local offices modeled on Presidential, and legally imposed media-access campaign periods; ranked choice voter advocates; proponents of substantial K street (and all other) lobbyist access to elected officials; restoration of funding to federal agencies intended to monitor “patrician” business/tax activities and Congressional staff necessary to research/formulate national legislation (further reducing direct corporate intervention in national/state policies.

Right wing populism: libertarian economic/tax/regulation policy advocacy, which has led to the Tea Party and Freedom Caucus, both presently blocking Senate Covid relief legislation (The Tea Party rode a wave of conspiracy theories about Obama in order to push the Republican Party further right to the point of Libertarianism. It also became associated with the Freedom Caucus, another populist Conservative movement.)

Today’s patricians should not dare to pretend to be afraid of the deficit after four years’ fostering the runaway destruction of the present regim…Presidency*.

By “populists”, Ted meant “plebs”?

Nice classical reference!

@William Bednar : People like the Gracchi brothers and Caesar (who were not plebes) were the populists of the Roman Republic. They belonged to the Populares faction and were opposed by the Optimates.

Those factions were long gone by the time the Roman Empire reached the state shown above.

The Church was one of the big looters of the classical buildings of Rome.

How about someone who’s more interested in promoting the health and welfare of actual people, instead of yahoos fighting over “stimulating the economy” vs hypocritically pushing the “debt crisis” garbage.

Here comes the Kamala Harris piece: