At the heart of Reaganism lies the enshrined myth of the powers of competition in free markets. Unfortunately, truly free markets do not and cannot exist in human society which aspires to honor the rights and dignity of all human beings. Human beings are not and do not behave as commodities in a post-slavery world.
While we do live in a society in the U.S. where people profit from aging, sickness and death, we are seeing the failure of that profiteering in the health care system. The majority of the American electorate acknowledge that this is a serious problem. They also demonstrate with polling that they have no idea what to do about it. This is the cognitive dissonance of Reaganism as it has been sold by Neo-con minions.
Corporate welfare has blossomed since the Reagan era. Multinationals are becoming the welfare mothers of the new millennium. The truly poor and the newly poor, once seen as the working or lower middle class, are dependent on ongoing funding bills in Congress to secure unemployment benefits, which are necessitated by the financial mismanagement and downsizing greed of corporations, whose bail-outs were swiftly paid out.
The relentless brain-washing of the populace by Murdoch media since the Reagan era has duped the general public in the U.S. into equating socialism with Nazi-ism. Meanwhile, Murdoch and his cronies are collecting billions in subsidies and tax exemptions. They are laughing all the way to their bailed-out banks. They are dancing at their own elegant tea parties, while funding uninformed malcontents to disrupt the people's business.
The myth of free markets often merges with the myth of competitive sports in pop culture. And, like the financial markets, competitive sports are a corrupted version of the ideals of team play. Drug-enhanced athletes lie in front of Congress with relative impunity. Sports venues are over-priced gladiatorial displays which represent big money and big profits, not fair play.
Why does all this sound so familiar? Well, human history has a way of cycling because human beings are generally averse to change. And, there isn't a quick fix for that problem as long as universal human rights and universal human education are seen as impractical, lofty ideals. Fighting for those ideals is not a free market principle. There is little profit in it.
