Thread by @RachelBitecofer

1. Yes, @FareedZakaria's new book, Ten lessons From a Post-Pandemic World argues we don't need a big or small gov- we need a GOOD one.

We don't have that now & that is bc for decades now, the GOP has intentionally hallowed it out. Stripping it of funding under the auspice that

2. the only goal should be small. And as it turns out- that was stupid. And now we have a dysfunctional, as @maddow says, "big, bad" gov. Something that has been "wasted, and rotted and ruined." And its been intentional. Its been murdered, with no thought for how people would

3. suffer for it. COVID just put that suffering in a streamlined spotlight. But as @FareedZakaria points out- its the cherry on top of a 40 year plan that Bannon termed the final "deconstruction of the administrative state." As with the decimation of the economic tools that had

4. allowed the world's 1st middle class to emerge & flourish before The Great Lie ushered in the greatest wealth transfer in history. Not only were Americans bamboozled into voting away their wage increases, their pensions, & their health care (at least till 2010)- they were also

5. tricked into pissing away their country's superiority- its claim to fame, its ability to puff its chest out & say "look over here, we have the best _____. " I had no idea when I was a kid that we were not, in fact, the greatest country on Earth- at least not if you care about

6. actually BEING the greatest country on Earth for realz- and not just saying you are. Like college football. IDK- it matters to me. I want the Ducks to be #1 somewhere other than in their own heads. I mean, don't get me wrong- we've got categories! We're #1 in national defense,

7. & w all the damage the Republican Party has done to our NATO alliances w their elevation of an unqualified and legit crazy reality show criminal as their party's nominee in 2016 certainly cost us a lot in our global standings, so its a damn good thing that we've consistently

8. invested ludicrous amounts of money on national defense bc if the D Party can't fix what the Rep Party has done to America's image & standing abroad, we'll need it! We are also #1 in plastic surgery. But all the shit we USED to be #1 in- all the stuff that FDR & the Democrat's

9. New Deal that was created to fix the 1920s Rep Party's f'up that caused the Great Depression (I'm sensing a pattern here!)- that stuff we were kicking ass internationally on, for a nice long time. We had the best K-12 system & the best higher ed system. But bc of ideology

10. bc of this whole hang up about local control and schools, we blew that. We now have one of the worst K-12 systems in the world, guaranteed to suck bc its financed via property tax which is a system that perpetuates inequality and poverty. But our higher ed system has survived

11. #1- primarily bc we can milk int'l students to offset our costs. I should add- this is a small subset of schools, the broader system in the US is struggling & do you know why? Yep, bc the Rep Party has come for it too! Over the past few decades, the funding for colleges & uni

12. which used to be covered by states has been getting cut and with each cut, tuition and fees must rise!) and in state's defense these cuts, well maybe not in some Red states where starving government & public entities is part of the fun, these cuts have been necessary bc of

13. budget pressure & the rule that state's must balance out their sheets every year- no deficit spending at the state level! So FYI: we are expected to lose about 1/2 of the current colleges & universities we now have over the course of the next decade (I believe decade). Not

14. sure we'll maintain that #1 in the world status after that! And healthcare! We're not even in the top 50 in healthcare. Or retirement. Or things of that nature. In the U.S. life expectancy is lower than in western Europe, Canada, & Australia. The infant mortality rate

15. is higher. We're declining in these metrics even as some of our peer democracies rise. And the thing you should know, that you should understand, that we hope to make Americans see, to understand, is that this, for some reason, has all been by design. The product of specific

16. choices, policies, politicians, think tanks, & one political party that up to now has been able to operate w impunity.

A party that is no longer just a danger to itself- its a danger to us all.

A party that was, if presented w a narrow victory & a workable pathway to

17. disqualify tens of thousands of Democratic voter ballots, perfectly happy to do so to reverse engineer a 2nd Trump term & a presidency. That plan thwarted by the size of Biden's margin of victory. Too big to pull it off discreetly.

Of course 2 mins after I post this, @RBReich's got a new book that will tell you the full story of how the GOP killed the American middle class. Serendipitous!

robertreich.org/post/132363519…