https://hartmannreport.com/p/why-its-impossible-for-right-wing-69b

Why It's Impossible for #Right-Wing #Governments to Handle a #Crisis
Why right wing crises face incompetence or cynical exploitation. Bush and “heckofajob Brownie”; Netanyahu and Gaza; Trump and Covid, or his cynically tossing paper towels at hurricane victims..

THOM #HARTMANN
OCT 17, 2023

..."Leftwing governments believe in democracy, and so try to accomplish what’s best for the majority of people while protecting the rights of the minority; rightwing governments practice autocracy on behalf of the morbidly rich. Sometimes, like the old USSR or modern Venezuela, repressive and authoritarian rightwing governments pretend to be left-wing, but the police state aspects of their governance give the game away.

— Rightwingers don’t see democracy as a benefit or even an ideal; they see it as an impediment to further comforting the already-comfortable while enriching themselves in the process. Instead of building up disaster preparedness through strengthening, for example, FEMA, they work to redirect those government dollars back to their friends through things like $600 billion a year in oil industry subsidies and over $20 trillion (cumulatively) in Republican tax cuts to billionaires since 1981.

The result — when rightwingers are in charge — is government that’s not paying attention to real threats and, when they come, responds with profound incompetence or cynical exploitation. Bush and “heckofajob Brownie”; Netanyahu and Gaza; Trump and Covid, or his cynically tossing paper towels at hurricane victims.

Bush was not only incompetent in allowing 9/11 to happen despite multiple warnings that he refused to respond to, but when it did happen he tried to use it to his own political advantage and that of his Vice President by lying us into two unnecessary and illegal wars."...