E.J. Dionne wrote a column last week in which he said that free-market economic theory has collapsed.
You know the talking points: Regulation is the problem and deregulation is the solution. The distribution of income and wealth doesn’t matter. Providing incentives for the investors of capital to “grow the pie” is the only policy that counts. Free trade produces well-distributed economic growth, and any dissent from this orthodoxy is “protectionism.”
The old script is in rewrite. “We are in a worldwide crisis now because of excessive deregulation,” Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview.
To which I say, ha. Since when does the Right let anything like real-world experience or empirical evidence get in the way of a good fairy tale?
I’ve been watching today to see who’s commenting on the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac crisis, and it’s mostly been us Leftie bloggers, with a few moderate Right exceptions. The Right is already coming up with creative ways to blame the Left. It’s what they’re good at.
And for handy textbook examples of blaming the Left, see Crooks and Liars’s article on John Kyl, blaming Congress while conveniently forgetting who was running Congress at the critical time:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/07/14/late-edition-sen-kyl-bemoans-failure-of-conservative-congress-to-regulate-mortgage-industry/
And check out the comments there for some die-hard acolytes of the Holy Church of the True Free Market…
“A free-market america would let people be free to trade and work with each other without any government interference. It would return to a focus on production and savings instead of consumption and debt(which is possible through the federal reserve’s easy money policy)- and since more people would be able to save due to not being excessively taxed- there would be more wealth, and more businesses would be opening and competing with each other to provide both the best product and best working wages/conditions. ”
I think we’re looking at the Trotskyites of the 21st century.
The latest crisis has finally gotten me to understand how the righties believe in this whole free-market myth. As a leftie, I’ve always thought, “Gee, sure, the market is great when you win, but what about when you lose? The market is all about risk, and people can be ruined.” Now I see that, for the right, that downside is imaginary, because they can always get the government to absorb all the downside. A “free” market works great if someone else eats the costs.
It’s the old I’m-blameless-because-someone-else-is-equally-to-blame nonsense transparent in its inanity to all but the mentally challenged who continue to convince themselves that it’s a truth.
As far as the Right blaming the Left for the criminal dealings of the Fannie and Freddie crowd, following a few ‘dots’ may lead to their real gripe. “Fannie was created during the New Deal to make homes more affordable for lower-and-middle-income families. Freddie was later added for the same purpose.” There lies the real gripe. Right along with Social Security and all those other give-aways-to-the-undeserving-poor-and-lower-middle-classes, affordable housing is just one more government program designed to rob me in order to benefit the undeserving.
It’s all Chuck Schumer’s fault… cause he has been president for the past eight years… hasn’t he…? Umm…?
Jeepers, I wish my favorite omelet pan had as nonstick a surface as old Dubya. He’s light years beyond Teflon.
A good definition of a fool is someone who refuses to acknowledge the truth that is staring them in the face. Rightards waste tons of energy denying reality, and in inventing clever explanations for why their fantasy world really is the truth. Rush Limbaugh does this all day long and gets paid big bux for it. Your average rightard is only apeing Rush. They actually pride themselves on their cleverness.
It’s not enough for them to create this defense against reality, they have to fight others to enforce it. They get a big kick out of that, of kicking others down with whom they disagree. This is nothing but ego, which is itself a defense against reality, and which loves a fight.
As the song goes, everyone plays the fool sometimes. However, there are those who have elected to make a career out of it, who are so married to their particular fantasy, that it takes a major ruinous event to shake them of it. Most of us realize that Reality is not something to be trifled with, and so we hold our beliefs, our explanations of Reality, a little more tentatively, ready to jettison them if need be. Your “Wisdom of Doubt” series was all about this.
I’ve been reading Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth recently (and can’t recommend it highly enough – it’s even better than his first book, The Power of Now). What comes through in all spiritual traditions is the need to relinquish the ego, which is little more than a defense against the present moment.
Wingnuts will never be a part of “A New Earth”, because they fight so hard against reality, against what the present moment is trying to teach them. Their egos have to be right, no matter what, no matter what fantastic story they concoct to make themselves right. They have yet to get to the place of maturity where they can be honest, and be wrong occasionally, however painful this may be. They missed a fundamental lesson of youth, that finding, and clinging to, and fighting for the truth is everything. Instead, they’re all about Winning, and winning at any cost.
Because reality is bigger than any fantasy, their lives are full of incongruencies, which we call hypocrisies. From the Wall Street fat cats who hate government until the time their financial institution fails, to the average two bit gummint-hating rightard who sure as hell hopes the FDIC covers what funds they’ve got in their local bank.
You got it, Moonbat. Buddha said, know yourself – and then we’ll talk (my add-on, but of course if you accomplish the task, any ‘talk’ would be redundant.)
Knowing yourself requires a rigorous discipline of self and therefore is a very tall order and an absolutely useless endeavor for the likes of a Rightie who already has all the answers. Enlightened they’ll never be because in their minds they already are.
Moonbat is right on about the rightwingers fighting against reality.
“Believe what you want to believe” is the rightwinger mentality in a nutshell. Listen to conservative talk radio. The host and the listeners hammer out their consensus view based on who has the best story… the one that they most want to believe.
It’s like the Scientific Method in reverse: start with the conclusion, and then work your way backwards to the initial hypothesis. If one wanted to codify ignorance itself, this seems like the best way to do it.
Buddy, ‘Scientific Method in reverse’ really defines Rightie ?reasoning? By the way, it’s exactly what those who ‘use’ the Bible to justify anything and everything they have already decided is right. Make a conclusion, find something in the Bible to support it, and voila, your conclusion is proved infallible. (You think slavery’s wrong? Not according to the Bible.)