Neil Reynolds of the Globe & Mail

I've mentioned from time to time that my partner, for reasons of her own, has subscribed to the Globe & Mail. I tend to get up before everyone else these days, so I get it and read it with my morning calories and caffeine. I must say that it's surreal to once again submerge myself in the blinkered, idiotic world-view of the political dim-wits who put that paper together. It's like this totally professional newspaper with all these interesting things to say about culture and science, with some good journalism thrown in, and an editorial page that occasionally surprises with its ability to get good thinkers' opinions before its readers.

Ah, but that editorial page! Jeffrey Simpson ("Duh! Health care is expensive!"), Margaret ('s brain) Wente, Marcus Gee. Jesus Christ what morons! Seriously. Fucking morons. I mean, they either truly believe this neo-liberal bullshit they peddle, or they're cynical con-artists. Either way they're contemptible.

And, added to this sorry lot of fools is one Neil Reynolds, who appears to be one of their regular columnists. I first mentioned Mr. Reynolds in my entry entitled "Random Crap" wherein I marvelled at the dunce's yammerings that we should ban third parties in order to enjoy the supreme democratic miracle that is the US-American two-party system.

I next encountered Reynolds in the Globe's "Report on Business" section where he ranted against imposing a bank tax, utilizing the standard neo-liberal intellectual garbage, including such faded gems as "taxing business really hurts the poor" and "Keynesianism was discredited." I actually was only skimming his offerings, not prepared to give them the attention that they did not deserve, when the idiot then began to wax eloquent on the bugaboo of Keynes:

For his part, Prof. Tobin described himself explicitly as “a disciple of Keynes.” But, as many contemporary Keynesians forget, Mr. Keynes himself – when it mattered – was himself a disciple of dictatorships. In his essay Keynes, the Man, U.S. libertarian economist Murray Rothbard recalls that Keynes was an enthusiastic supporter in the 1930s of Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder of British fascism, and that Keynes consistently championed the fascist economic model. Writing in 1939, in the foreword to the German edition of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, his manifesto, Mr. Keynes conceded that his economic theories “adapt more easily to the conditions of a totalitarian state … than to the conditions of free competition.”

It's at this point that sane people throw their arms skyward in despair. In all honesty, I had to stop reading and move on before returning to it later for sheer sick entertainment purposes. Neil! Neil baby! Are you really that stupid? Keynes saved capitalism's sorry ass in the 1940s you stupid fuck! But, more importantly, Neilly baby, do you know who else, what else, most benefits from dictatorships than from democracies? IMF structural adjustment programs! The whole "Washington Consensus" thing! Your precious neo-liberalism! Throughout the history of imperialism in the capitalist era, the Great Powers supported the most reactionary elements against the people, in order to best ensure the plundering of resources and disruption of everyday economies that would inevitably ensure social unrest. Every single time!!

I mean, seriously folks, what else is there to say about this Reynolds buffoon after that? If this idiot really believes that he's upholding democracy when the idea that he has in his head to correspond with the word is the US model and the "Washington Consensus" what is there that's worth saving, that requires treating him and his words with any respect?? There's nothing. The man is as big an idiot as anyone would care to paint him.

So, this morning, I see a third column by the plodding dullard, and I realize that the fuckwad has scored himself a steady gig with the Globe. This time he's droning on about the Greek financial crisis, all the usual rot about "investors" who aren't certain that the Greek government will really deliver on the promised austerity so they're "uncertain" about whether to support the bail-out.

[Let's forget that the bail-out is for these self-same "investors" and that if these "rational" "investors" DON'T support the bail-out, then it means a Europe-wide financial crisis, which will destroy the tepid world recovery, which will kill all these "investors" so why the fuck don't they bite the bullet and play along and accept their 100 cents on the dollar bail-out and shut the goddamned fuck up???]

So, Reynolds is blathering on and on with the banalities when he farts up this:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty are right to press the more profligate countries for an exit strategy from stimulus spending. But what the rich economies actually need is an exit strategy from too much spending of all kinds and a return to some pragmatic recognition of the limits of government.

Um, Neil? Neil? A moment of your time, if you will? Thanks ...

JESUS-FUCKING-CHRIST NEIL!!!!! WERE YOU BORN WITH YOUR HEAD UP YOUR ASS YOU STUPID FUCK?????? IS THAT WHAT MADE YOURS A DIFFICULT BIRTH AND WHAT CUT THE OXYGEN OFF FROM YOUR BRAIN CAUSING YOU TO WRITE TRIPE LIKE THAT?????

I'm sorry Neil. Really I am. No I'm not. I think that was warranted to tell you the fucking truth.

Do you not realize, Neil, that we've been hearing this garbage about the "limits of government" for THIRTY YEARS now? You miserable fucking ignorant slut Neil, do you not realize that the reason that things like health care spending have been rising as a proportion of government revenues because those government revenues have been reduced due to decades of tax cuts to the wealthiest? Do you not realize that this financial crisis was brought on by the deregulation of the financial markets? Do you not realize that the lion's share of the Greek crisis is caused by the fact that the wealthy don't pay their taxes, and then the bastards toss their fucking Olympic fiscal orgies on to the public's dime?

Oh well. What the hell. Neil Reynolds is just a hack pundit, writing for the business press of the national newspaper of a small country (a zit on the back of the dying terminal patient that is the USA), who cares what the unoriginal, untalented fuck has to say?

But then it dawned on me. This puss-ball is just one voice in the chorus of evil. This shit-smear is contributing to the cacophony of voices calling for the destruction of the European welfare-state! Do you see how it works people? Do you see what "hegemony" means? The neo-liberal scum have fucked-over their own little system, where they have ruled for over three decades. Because their ideas are useless, self-serving, self-destructive crapola. But they remain in the driver's seat, which means (picture a dangerous drunk driver at the wheel of a car that you are in) that it's them who get to call the shots, it's them who get to stupidly decide where to veer next.

Just because their policies of devastating the US population's ability to pay for the mountain-ranges of "stuff" that our technology allows us to build, and relying on getting them loaded-up on unsustainable levels of household debt, has blown-up in their faces, doesn't mean that the masters of the planet aren't going to think that condemning Europe to a decade and more of painful austerity is a good idea. And lil' Neil here has drank the kool-aid. He's a true (turd) believer in all this garbage, so of course, he has to contribute his own little stream of piss to the bowl.

That's his function. That's his crime.