"Predator State" -- best description of Bu**sh** admin EVER

[eppur_se_muova]

I've already started two threads about James Galbreath's recent interview on Democracy Now, but there's something toward the very end of the interview that I wanted to draw special attention to, for its massive degree of pithiness:

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Galbraith, I hate to ask you this last question with just about thirty seconds to go, but it’s about the title of your book and what it means, The Predator State.

JAMES GALBRAITH: Well, the Predator State refers to the takeover of state power by private interests masquerading behind conservative principle and basically acting for private clients and private profit. That was the Bush administration in a nutshell. The title goes back to Veblen and a bit to my father’s New Industrial State, and it’s an attempt to capture in two words a phenomenon that I think really has transformed our economy, much for the worse in the last several decades.

There have been some discussions on DU about whether the religulous "took over" the Republicans or vice versa. The Book on Bush (among others) made it clear Bu**sh** said one thing, did another, so he couldn't be regarded as someone who acted out of sincere beliefs, but only out of opportunism. He supported the evangelicals because they had votes and resources he needed, not because he was allied with them in their beliefs. It was only the worst elements on Wall Street that fit that latter description.

Predator State is now on my short list of 'must' acquisitions.

[omega minimo]

1. And I thought the word for it was merely

"mercenary."


Bush never seemed to believe in anything at all, anything he said was an abstraction of little interest to him.

Disengaged.

[glitch]

3. I did read he was very focused when he talked about money, power, and revenge.

Well, that's what I read.

[calimary]

5. Especially lethal revenge. Lots of talk about killing and death and unseen threats

during which georgie-poo would become most animated.

Almost as though junior never quite grew out of the role of that snot-nosed bully in Boy Scouts who always tried to scare the crap out of the Cub Scouts around their first campfire.

[glitch]

9. Yeah, he bacame especially focused when it was threats to anything less powerful

He only becomes a muddled good ol' boy when people want to hold him and his friends accountable for the crimes they've committed.

[WinkyDink]

2. Fascism.

[glitch]

4. That was an excellent interview, I appreciate your postings on it. K & R nt

[Kaleko]

6. Good catchphrase: the Predator State practising disaster capitalism.

Thanks for the post.

[SammyWinstonJack]

7. knr

[SpiralHawk]

8. Republicons became the Predator State. Entirely apt name

And the Republicon prey was America and the American people...