GOP Uses Dr. Seuss To Distract From Their Embrace of Gangster Capitalism

Cranking up the culture wars won’t stop the destruction of our democracy…but it might win elections

Thom Hartmann
6 min readMar 6, 2021
Photo by Scott Webb on Unsplash

So, while the Senate was debating Joe Manchin’s proposal to cut back unemployment benefits to Americans whacked by the coronavirus, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was reading Dr. Seuss out loud.

And he chose to read “Green Eggs and Ham,” an uncontroversial Seuss classic, instead of the six Seuss books that the family’s foundation pulled from circulation because they portray Black and Chinese people in racist ways.

Why would McCarthy do this? It turns out that Republicans and rightwing media are frantically engaging in culture wars with Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head to distract us from their embrace of anti-democratic Gangster Capitalism.

There are two main alternatives to American democracy and Regulated Capitalism being offered on the world’s stage right now, and the GOP has made their choice.

The first possible choice is Communist Capitalism, practiced by China and Vietnam. This system leads to rapid economic growth, raises the middle class, but crushes democracy, free speech and dissent.

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Thom Hartmann
Thom Hartmann

Written by Thom Hartmann

America’s #1 progressive talk show host & NY Times bestselling author. Thom’s writings also appear at HartmannReport.com.