RYAN: Next Reagan? Yikes

Glory be! Nathan Prower sees Paul Ryan as Ronald Reagan brought back to life and he celebrates with a one-man hallelujah chorus, a cappella and off key. At least that’s how his letter of Aug. 15 struck me.

Takes all kinds, doesn’t it? As I see it, the last thing we need is a Reagan revival of any kind. After all, a part of the Gipper is still with us and sticking like glue, an essential part of him. It’s called trickle down economics or “voodoo economics,” as Bush senior once dubbed it. If I recall correctly, it didn’t work. Bushels of green were shoveled into the head of the beast, but what trickled down was brown. Excuse me. I meant to say it didn’t work for the workers or the middle class. Didn’t work for most of us, in other words. But it certainly worked for a privileged few. (Bless them every one.)

And today we’re confronted at every turn with this pathetic illusion that since the wealthy create and provide jobs for the rest of us, they shouldn’t be taxed too much, if at all. That is trickle down deja vu … and Paul Ryan, too, from whatever angle you care to view him.

With this election the choice couldn’t be more clear. As a nation we will reassert our democratic ideals or chuck them for an increasingly plutocratic system, under which, politically, wealth corrupts everything in its path, leaving workers, wage earners and middle class — those who keep the wheels turning, getting the crops picked, the bread baked, the houses built, caring for the sick and just generally doing what needs doing — politically impotent, more or less, and rendered that way, hard as it is to say, by the ballot box.

We owe a lot to each other. We’re all connected. None of us would last long outside the social fabric. We needn’t think alike or share the same opinions — not that we’re about to — but it would surely be to the common good if we could at least acknowledge the quaint concept of social obligation and what it’s based on, the moral and practical reasons for it. Quaint or not, it’s not going away.

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