They say Maggie Thatcher revitalized England’s economy and unleashed market forces. But her legacy is much nastier than that: she destroyed the social contract and the idea that people should help each other.
Margaret Thatcher RIP
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication, WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal, a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "The Stringer."
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Maggie is food for worms.
Worms are nature’s way of recycling excrement into human life supporting stuff.
Who says a good thing can’t come from a bad thing?
And yet she never touched the national health service….it is not the least bit comparable to what happened in the United States
I read this morning that there is a movement afoot to have people in England buy a download of “Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead” so that it will become the number one song of the week and be reported on the news, as the number one download always is.
This, of course, has the conservative element up in arms. They are outraged, shocked, sickened, whatever, that there are such awful people in the world who would do such a thing …
Ever notice that? When some progressive type comes up with a sly way of commenting on something that is injurious to the conservative mindset (but which actually does nothing one way or the other to change any policies at all) it’s an obscenity, the most sickening, monstrous thing ever.
But when the conservatives gut social programs (which is a real injury — sometimes fatal — to the weakest members of our society) and the progressives object, those progressives are told to stop being a bunch of crybabies.
In “Hellblazer” (the comic, not the movie), one of John Constantine’s foes has a line that has stuck in my head for decades. It goes something like this: “There’ll be one England. And there will be those who rule and those who are ruled. And by God, you’ll bloody well know which group you’re in.”
That sums up Thatcherite England pretty bloody well. And if there is a Heaven and a Hell, I bet Maggie bloody well knows which one she’s in now.
Aggie,
Just a quick thought. Thatcher’s England was comparable to Reagan’s America because they reinforced each other.
Were it just Reagan, I think the teflon would have flaked off a little faster. Perhaps fast enough for the damage he caused to be ameliorated. But Reagan was a tv-trained spokesmodel. He was confident in front of the cameras, and he had decades of training on how to act. And he is the ur-Republican President: Bush I, Bush II, Obama (the three most-recent Republican presidents) are all merely copies or diminishments of the Reagan.
Bush I — Reagan without the casualness. Reagan without the lack of money appearance. Reagan acted like an Everyman, but for decades, Reagan had never spent a minute’s worry about money. There was always another cigarette commercial or monkey movie waiting to be made. But Reagan made it seem like he was just like the rest of us — watching the pennies, looking for a good bargain. Bush the First always looked a little formal, and he certainly never looked like he was saving change in a jar.
Bush II — Take all of Reagan’s natural grace away. Then tack on a penalty, maybe a shoe with a heel three inches higher than the other shoe. Then shove him out onto a dance floor. That’s Dubya. Then do the same thing with his mouth. Shit, the man couldn’t even smile with both sides of his face. Reagan was a master of the ad-lib, the memorized lines, and how to cover up a flub. Dubya would have forgotten his lines if he was playing a deaf-mute.
Obama — Obama’s actually the closest Republican to Reagan we’ve had in a long time. He’s photogenic. He’s personable. He’s easy on the eyes. There’s a natural grace and fluidity to his movements: a natural-born actor’s sense of body movement and placement. And he’s just as much a tool of the corporate paymasters as Reagan ever was. Obama, however, knows what he’s doing. Whereas Reagan was, I suspect, genuinely driven by a combination of failing mental powers and a genuine sense of American entrepreneurialism, The One is driven by the standard kit of the Chicago wardheeler: acquire power, enrich one’s self, take care of a narrow circle of friends, and do it for as long as you can. Hard to belief Obama was a millionaire before he became President, ain’t it? But he surely is. Just like Reagan.
Ted, you’re at your best when you are merciless! Love the spotty-faced image of Thatcher!
Alex, Great Hellblazer reference. Constantine, after Roger Waters, was one of the people that went through my mind when I heard Maggie died.
To Glenn:
I get the food for worms concept.
But I’d feel a lot better if that harridan were fixed in triple-strength embalming fluid, cast in glass like radioactive waste, then put in a stainless steel box with 6″ thick walls and all THAT cast in concrete.
To falco,
I’d settle for a wooden stake through her heart.
Followed by a bonfire while singing “Ding Dong the Wicked Witch is Dead. “
The Brittish still have a very efficient national health service…..and we’re still getting boned in the rear….
There was a group that held a Thatcher death celebration – see:
http://m.smh.com.au/world/hundreds-turn-out-for-thatcher-death-party-20130414-2ht90.html
Ms Thatcher herself has been irrelevant since Novemberr1990, but alas, her vicious ideology – or rather, the ideology to which she subscribed ; she certainly didn’t invent it, no more than Ronald Wilson Reagan invented Reaganism) – still rules today, in North America and most of Europe. Glenda Jackson is spot on here (http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/out-there-1/an-assessment-of-thatcher.html)….
Henri
Tis true, Henri, and yet despite all Thatcher did, she did not mess with the British NHS….at the end of the day, she at least acknowledged reality. The same is not true for the conservatives in the US…
Yah Alex I have noticed exactly that all the time, re: liberal criticism = mean and cruel, while liberals upset at actual enacted conservative cruelty = cry babies.
I could be wrong, but in elaborating on Teds fourth panel “privatization”: as I understand it, the British train system was the envy of all Europe. So, among other things, Thatcher underfunded it until it became the laughing stock of Europe, and used that as a justification to privatize the “failing” system. Once privatized, service never recovered back to where it once was, but costs exploded. Indeed costs became so prohibitive that subsidy was needed. Now the British pay for their train service via taxes, probably pretty close to what they used to, and then they also have to pay fairly significantly to actually use them, just to get a service that isn’t quite up to where it was once when it was back when it was just a public service.
I tell this story because it is the perfect representitive one paragraph summary of all of Thatcherism.