Earlier this week, there was a troll eruption on my post about the lack of empirically based objection to the stimulus on the right. CATO Economist Arnold Kling used the word "reparations" to describe the stimulus bill, saying, "To the Democrats, the Bush tax cuts were a heinous evil, comparable to Germany's violation of Belgian neutrality in World War I. Now, they are demanding reparations." As Steve M. says, deniability is the new racism. It seemed clear to me that Kling had constructed a flimsy context in order to use the racially loaded word "reparations" to refer to Obama's stimulus bill, much the same way that the McCain campaign referred to payroll tax cuts as "welfare."
At a recent panel, Kling described the stimulus bill in similarly loaded terms, but dispensed with the window dressing:
“I think about the stimulus as an economist but I feel it as a father. Barack Obama is destroying my daughters’ future. It is like sitting there watching my house ransacked by a gang of thugs. That’s how I feel, now back to how I think.”Right. The stimulus bill is analagous to "a gang of thugs" who are "ransacking my house." Obama is "destroying my daughters' future." Kling's emotional reaction to the stimulus bill, aside from being completely insane, sounds like a description of the climactic final scene in D.W. Griffith's Klan epic Birth of a Nation.
Gee Kling, why don't you just say the stimulus bill is like "Willie Horton just got let out on furlough"?
-- A. Serwer
