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Mitt Romney and America's 'Medieval' Calvinist Resurgence (Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany)

"It's that eerie feeling that this country we love so much (Manhattan, Dylan, Philip Roth) is still fundamentally foreign to us (genetically altered foods, Wall St., George W. Bush). Isn't Mitt Romney one of those people who gave us the most severe economic crisis since 1929? ... Instead of solidarity and a sense of community, a self-righteous anger is directed at the victims of the crisis - at the losers, the penniless, the bankrupt, and the millions on the street as a result of home foreclosures - and at the government, which has undertaken to help them."

By Andrian Kreye

Translated By Stephanie Martin

October 14, 2012

Germany - Sueddeutsche Zeitung - Original Article (German)

Christian reformer John Calvin, a leading proponent a theology that has a rather strict point of view about the relationship between humans and God, is likely at the root of today's right-wing Republican Party doctrine. CNBC NEWS VIDEO: Business reporter Rick Santelli loses his cool over helping homeowners who are 'under water,' Feb. 29, 2009, 00:01:09

God rewards the hard-working and punishes the idlers. When it comes down to it, those who live in poverty should blame themselves and don't deserve help. This type of thinking has always existed in American society. And thanks to Mitt Romney, this ideology, which seems bizarre to Europeans, is returning with a vengeance.

If Germans could vote in the United States, it would have been all over by now. Eighty-nine percent of respondents in a ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen/Second German Television) political poll said they would vote for Obama. Only two percent would choose Mitt Romney. And that brings us to what is so fascinating about American presidential campaigns.

It's that eerie feeling that this country we love so much (Manhattan, Dylan, Philip Roth) is still fundamentally foreign to us (genetically altered foods, Wall Street, George W. Bush). Isn't Mitt Romney one of those people who gave us the most severe economic crisis since 1929? And didn't Obama withdraw the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, provide poor Americans with health insurance, and hunt down Osama bin Laden?

There are good explanations for Mitt Romney's successes. Some of them can be found in the book Pity the Billionaire by Thomas Frank. Frank belongs to that group of intellectuals who in The Baffler, a magazine published in Chicago, invented a new form of critique of capitalism which deals more with realities than theories. Thomas Frank was recently on a book tour in Germany, and when he spoke about his country, he was confronted by rooms full of incredulous faces.

Instead of solidarity and a sense of community, he said, there is self-righteous anger. He described in detail how America responded to the financial crisis - not with reform but with even more systematic deregulation, a radical implementation of free market economics and a fierce opposition to any social measures and programs.

This is reminiscent of medieval medical practices, which included cauterizing wounds with hot irons. But above all, the reaction - a natural response in the United States as elsewhere - reversed itself. Instead of solidarity and a sense of community, a self-righteous anger is directed at the victims of the crisis - at the losers, the penniless, the bankrupt, and the millions on the street as a result of home foreclosures - and at the government, which has undertaken to help them, thus legitimizing their failure.

The engine of this bizarre Zeitgeist is a new caste from the highest tax bracket: the "offended." It now has a surprisingly large following among the middle class and barely wealthy - groups that really can't afford to adopt such a hard line.

The caste's hour of birth was broadcast live on February 29, 2009 on the business news channel CNBC. Reporter Rick Santelli stood there on the parquet floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and worked himself into a rage. In Santelli's opinion, the government assistance program for homeowners who could no longer pay their mortgages was "promoting bad behavior" and "subsidizing losers' mortgages." Outraged, he asked the assembled stockbrokers, "How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor's mortgage who has an extra bathroom and can't pay their bills?" In a full-blown rage, he exclaimed: "This is America!"

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Leon Cooperman, founder of a New Jersey hedge fund and champion of the caste of the "offended" behaved in a similarly angry manner. In November, he authored a letter to Obama that quickly made the rounds. He gave a detailed description of his childhood as the son of a Bronx plumber, of his long journey in the financial industry which he began as an indebted college graduate and is now ending with him as a multi-billionaire. According to Cooperman, the damage Obama is causing with his rhetoric and programs is no less than an incitement to "class warfare."

The holy book of the "offended" is Ayn Rand's now oft-quoted novel The Strike [Der Streik], which in its original form is much more aptly entitled Atlas Shrugged. Atlas, the god who shouldered the weight of the world, represents all of those who consider Mitt Romney and the "offended" to be society's "givers." Mitt Romney's infamous 47 percent "takers" are the burden that must be case off by this "shrug."

In Europe, this often teary-eyed depiction of the fundamentalist ideology of meritocracy is hard to swallow, because it contradicts our definition of society and the state. This is a society with a solidarity that for Germany and other European countries, is sacred, and entails a compromise acceptance of mediocrities, high taxes, and relatively generous social security.

But in America, at this point, the immense wealth and prosperity have been created almost entirely through individual effort. Never in the history of mankind was it possible to create such wealth as during the years 1997 to 2008. In most cases, this wealth was by no means created through traditional means of exploitation. Financial skill, innovation and risk-taking industries were the driving forces. Therefore, wealth is not seen as a privilege, but as a reward for hard work. Why should one share such reward with the hoards of losers who didn't take the trouble to amount to anything?

It is here that the faith that stood at the very beginning of American history asserts itself in the form of Calvinism, which was driven out of Europe to the New World. Calvinism (in broad terms) assumes that man is born a sinner, but that God rewards those who work hard and punishes the idle. So poverty is self-inflicted. This credo has always smoldered in American society. Only a Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to partly tame this original notion of a free market economy with the "New Deal," his new social contract after the Great Depression.

But now Calvinism is back with a vengeance. Mitt Romney may be a Mormon, but he and his biography stand precisely for this principle which is part and parcel of the roots of the nation. Even if it's no longer God who decides who is at fault: "Let the failures fail." Such ideas are extremely foreign to Europeans. Unless of course, it is about bailing out Greece and Spain.

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