If government failed to deliver for the vast majority over the past three decades, it is a mistake to simply attribute it to the rise of neoliberaliam and globalism. It is also the result of a conscious and systematic policy of the Republican right to make the federal government dysfunctional for the many, while bending over backwards to lend a helping hand to the corporate few. It was. in effect, a political as well as an economic strategy to secure their dominance.
I can hear someone replying with more than a hint of criticism that both parties fastened on to neoliberalism. OK. But not in exactly the same way by a long shot. The GOP prosecuted (and still does) a particularly nasty, virulent, racist, misogynist, anti-poor, anti-government brand. But it is precisely this fact that is obscured by such broad generalities that make invisible the policy differences between the two parties.
Perhaps at the level of theory this doesn’t matter much, but if you are on the receiving end of the policies of the extreme right, or lack thereof, it matters big time.
