SPYING WITH JOHN LeCARRE

I recently read The Secret Pilgrim by John LeCarre.  It was published in 1991, which was twenty one years ago.  At the end of the book he wrote, "Now that we had defeated Communism, we were going to have to set about defeating capitalism." (p.334)  Those words are very relevant to today's situation.  Communism has been defeated, despite Allen West's ranting that there are many communists among the Democratic representatives and senators.  He is sixty years behind the times; he belongs in the 1950's with Joseph McCarthy. 

The truly strange thing is that half the population does not even know what we are talking about.  Just five years ago American capitalism destroyed the entire world economy.  HELLO!  People talk as if nothing has happened.  The Democrats are trying to restore some of the regulations that were put in place about seventy years ago to prevent another Great Depression.  The Republicans are screaming that we must continue to de-regulate.  HELLO!  Republicans talk as if President Obama single handedly destroyed the American economy. 

There is no mention of the fact that President Bush decided to "starve the beast" by starting two wars and cutting taxes.  He then also took a "chainsaw" to the remaining regulations.  The elephant in the room is totally ignored.  No one mentioned deficits during the eight years of Bush's term in office.  The "deficit hawk" Paul Ryan was serving in Congress, but voted with Bush on all of the wars and the tax cuts.  Now Ryan is claiming that the deficit is intolerable and has created a budget which cuts taxes even more for the wealthy and doesn't balance the budget for thirty years.  Yet he complains that Obama has not yet succeeded in balancing the budget in three and a half years. 

The  main point of the Republicans is that we cannot afford health care for the 99%, we cannot afford social security and we cannot afford medicare. 

My opinion is that we cannot afford the military.  We have the world's largest military and its budget is loaded with pork.  We spend more money on the military than every other country in the world combined. We waste most of this money.  We build jets and helicopters that are so experimental they cannot fly.  We are still spending fortunes on "star wars."  And that doesn't work either.  This is nonsense.  I have another quotation. This one is from Horace Walpole: "This world is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel."