Brain-Dead Dittoheads and Their Owners
Doug Casey on the US’s Most Consistently Wrong-Headed Journalist
by Louis James
LewRockwell.com
[Skype rings. It’s Doug calling. Sounds like he’s got a fistful of papers he’s waving around in agitation.]
L: Hola, Doug – what’s on your mind?
Doug: Well, you know I try not to read much in the popular press. It’s mentally unsanitary. But occasionally, a few things catch my notice. For example, I’ve got an article I tore out of the September 3 Wall Street Journal – it’s been in a stack of papers for a couple of months, and I just uncovered it. I couldn’t decide, when I first tore it out, whether it was simply beneath contempt or worth commenting on. It’s an absolutely shocking indictment of the depth to which the moral and intellectual character of what was once America has descended. The title is How to Turn in Your Neighbor to the IRS. The author’s theme is that the IRS is offering big rewards to people who turn in tax cheats – but there are catches. As though the depravity of denouncing your neighbors to a ruthless, brutal, and predatory government bureaucracy were a good thing, as long as one is careful in going about it.
The person who wrote the article, one Laura Saunders – probably the kind of creature who’s angling for a cabinet post in the Department of the Treasury at some point – starts off by writing: “Maybe it’s your brother-in-law, who has a new Mercedes and likes to quip that only fools pay all their taxes.” The article then goes on to list other sorts of people who the envious losers and assorted sociopaths of the world may want to use the IRS to punish for being what they are.
[Sounds of paper being crumpled violently]
L: That article reminds me of Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, about a future in which houses were almost fireproof and books were banned because they made people think, which made them unhappy with the way things were. So there were special Fire Department drop boxes you could use to denounce your neighbors who might be hiding books in the rafters, and the Fire Department would show up and burn the house down, with prejudice.
Doug: [Laughs] Yes, that’s right. Even in prisons, among the dregs of society, the snitch – the squealer – is viewed as the lowest form of life, next to a child molester. But here we have someone alerting the public how to rat out their neighbors and relatives in a feature article in the Wall Street Journal. To me, this is an indication that the Wall Street Journal, supposedly a bastion of capitalism, is no bastion of anything. There are clearly no standards, either in its editorial department or among its reporters. It’s appalling and disgusting – but, that said, still far superior to the New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today.
[More crumpling of papers, possibly followed by the sound of a toppling wastebasket, knocked over by said crumpled papers]
The Rest…HERE
