Monday, July 12, 2010

I somehow fail to grasp your point...

By way of explaining how American poverty is far superior to the poverty of the rest of the world...

"One of the important lessons that came out of the Cold War -- and this is an important description that I don't think comes up enough - the Cold War was won by America because the engine of capitalism defeated the engine of socialism. The Soviets used to show a propaganda film - they wanted to show how horrible America was and how our poor were doing so poorly. They filmed a building in the poor section of New York with some broken windows and they said, 'Oh this is how the poor in America lives.' But it backfired on them because the Soviet citizens looked at that video closely and they saw flickering color television sets in all those windows." - Rand Paul

To which TPM astutely appends "So, the takeway: Don't worry, freezing poor people with broken windows. At least you've got color TV."

But FGAQ, being far less astute, ponders a different question: Doesn't this mean that the Soviets, even after being defeated by the engine of capitalism, also had some pretty nice televisions of their own? Color ones, obviously, in order to tell that the ghetto TVs were color, and ones with good enough resolution to be able to pick out that flickering from an exterior shot of the building. So what exactly is your point, Mister Paul? A man willing to mislead the American people on the topic of consumer goods is not a man to be trusted.

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