My son, Tobias, alerted me to this interesting article about the life of Romney's oldest son, Taggert:
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/magazine/108815/tagg-romney-myth-self-reliance?page=0,0
There are a good many things to be said about it [including a bit of snarking at the creepy image of Mitt and Ann as they went up to bed each evening], but what is important in it is the account of the perpetuation by the Romney clan of the myth of the self-made man -- be it father George, or son Mitt, or grandson Tagg.
It cannot be repeated too often that no one, absolutely no one, is self-made in any plausible sense of that expression. For the past million years or more, pre-hominids, hominids, and humans have been coming into a world they did not make and relying for life itself on the accumulated knowledge and material culture produced by their predecessors. No one, not a cobbler, not a farmer, not a hunter-gatherer, and certainly not a business tycoon, makes himself or herself [although this does seem to be a peculiarly male fantasy.]
As the article wisely and astutely concludes by observing, the self-indulgent myth of self-creation is transmuted in the political realm into the brutal stripping away of all the collective social protections that generations of struggle have put in place to help those who need the assistance of their fellow citizens.
The thirty-five year project to destroy those protections is well under way, and should Romney be elected, they will be further destroyed. The benighted and bigoted working class and middle class voters who cast their votes for Romney will suffer from this destruction, and they are simply too stupid to realize that simple fact. I realize that sophisticated social theorists like myself are supposed to offer profound and subtle explanations for systematic acts of self-destruction, but sometimes, when I grow weary of the game, I cannot resists calling it stupidity when I see it.
Sixteen days.
