Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [127]
Spending still not at a high enough level? Deliver tax cuts and stimulate the housing market by failing to vet applicants for income or assets and by lowering interest rates. Combine this proposed tax break with the drumbeat claim that it is our money and we, not the government, should decide how to spend it, and we have the perfect storm to create freem citizens in a freem America. We end up with frightened citizens desperate to make things better being told that what they already wanted to do is the most helpful and patriotic course of action. If things still continue to deteriorate, issue the previously mentioned tax rebate and tell people to go spend it to shore up the economy on which they all depend. All of this is supposed to keep the Dow up so that the corporations that own the media, make the goods and fight the wars keep posting record profits, come what may for the consuming class and their debt loads.
In this way, the mighty freem cycle is complete; we can make the world safe for democracy as we let freem ring.
After that admittedly breathless rant, a sort of weak homage to Dr. Colbert, let’s slow down and examine these issues a bit more carefully.
Find the Cost of Freemdom …
As it turns out, freem might have a higher cost to our society than freedom. From the set decor to the graphics and honoraria for guests, the Colbert Report cannot be cheap to produce. Even the extent to which the producers go to get the interviews is impressive and expensive. In one particularly egregious instance, Colbert interviewed a NASA astronaut aboard the International Space Station (or ISS) on Thursday, May 8th during which, among other things, a Wriststrong bracelet was sent spinning in the zero-gravity environment before its wearer promised to flick it towards God during his next spacewalk.
Now fun is fun, but there were literally billions of tax-payer dollars invested in the space program in general and the ISS in particular. While preaching his doctrine of freem, Colbert is using the work-products of the very military-industrial complex that is telling us that freedom is free. This is the same bunch that refuses to do anything to clean up our messes other than cut taxes and push their plans for discovering new fuel sources and “protecting”205 our existing ones. Despite the foreground of the ISS and all the tech toys at NASA, the entire message of the freemers is delivered via infrastructure that for which taxpayers have footed the bill. The radio, television and satellite infrastructure, not to mention the road-and-bridge traditional infrastructure, didn’t just happen—we and previous generations paid for it with our tax dollars. But now that consumer and national debt is reaching the point that people are losing their cars and houses, the Lords of Freem must choose between continuing to use tax dollars for their traditional purpose, the public good (maybe even health care?) and giving them back to the citizens to spend on the gewgaws advertised by the media juggernaut. Guess which one they’re choosing so far.
In The President of Good and Evil, Peter Singer investigates the constant Republican and Libertarian cry of “It’s your money” and comes to the conclusion that the percentage of a person’s income that is due to the existence of social capital (such as existing infrastructure and