Although the drumbeat of crisis in news has been steadily increasing from the end of 2011 it has paradoxically lost much of its drama. Reports that “North Korea’s new leader vowed in 2009 to wage war if the country’s enemies shot down its long-range rocket” or that Iran “will in the ‘near future’ start enriching uranium deep inside a mountain” or more bad economic news evoke a shrug and a blank stare in many.
Just as unemployment is ‘declining’ because people are no longer looking for work, interest in news may be waning simply because there is nothing new. It has the air of a blowout; where many had hoped the game would be close, the audience is leaving the stands for the parking lot because the bad guys have everything all but sewn up.
Those calling the play know that nobody is listening any more. Recently 500 current and former employees of the New York Times sent Arthur Sulzburger Jr a letter complaining about how how unfairly life has been to them, hoping that Sulzberger can change things, but knowing deep in their hearts that he cannot. The letter is ostensibly about the end of defined pensions among its foreign employees, but it is really about the end of an era.
“We, the Guild leadership and many reporters, editors, account managers and other Times employees, Guild members and otherwise, are writing to express profound dismay at several recent developments.
Our foreign citizen employees in overseas bureaus have just had their pensions frozen with only a week’s warning. Some of these people have risked their lives so that we can do our jobs. A couple have even lost them. Many have spent their entire careers at the Times — indeed, some have letters from your father explaining the pension system — and deserve better treatment.
At the same time, your negotiators have demanded a freeze of our pension plan and an end to our independent health insurance.
We ask you to withdraw these demands so that negotiations on a new contract can proceed fruitfully and expeditiously. We also urge you to reconsider the decision to eliminate the pensions of the foreign employees.
We have worked long and hard for this company and have given up pay to keep it solvent. Some of us have risked our lives for it. You have eloquently recognized and paid moving tribute to our work and devotion. The deep disconnect between those words and the demands of your negotiators have given rise to a sense of betrayal.
One of our colleagues in senior management recently announced her retirement from the paper, which is reported to include a very generous severance and retirement package, including full pension benefits.
All of us who work at the Times deserve to have a secured retirement; this should not be a privilege cynically reserved to senior management. We strongly urge you to keep faith with your words and our shared mission of putting out the best newspaper in the world.”
If as in many other places else the “senior management” of news is reserving the lifeboats for itself that is only because they also are afraid — or know for a certainty — how rapidly the water is rising in the bilges. Its every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.
The NYT and the Washington Post are hoping to sue those who pilfer their articles in order to revive their business. But that’s not going to fix the fact that the narrative is stale. There are no more riveting ups and downs of the economy; just downs. There is no longer the parade of diplomatic cliffhangers; they’ve all gone over the cliff. Where once newspapers could titillate audiences with stories of derring-do on the moon, reportage is now reduced to describing NASA questioning whether the surviving astronauts have the legal right to sell memorabilia. Man’s future in space is now ancient history and so perhaps is the drama that once went with it.
While Barack Obama can still say with a straight face that people alive today are lucky to see a someone who is at least the fourth best President in history — himself — many others wish they were born in some other time, laboring under the weight of what some have called a malaise. Here’s President Obama telling the current generation how lucky it is to have him.
The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president – with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln – just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history. But, you know, but when it comes to the economy, we’ve got a lot more work to do. And we’re gonna keep on at it.
But most of the nation was not as sanguine. According to the polls confidence in the American Dream isn’t what it used to be. The Gallup polling company reported that only 17% of Americans were satisfied “with the way things are going in the United States … the second-lowest annual average in the more than 30-year history of the question, after the 15% from 2008.”
As the Righteous Brothers once sang, “you’ve lost that loving feeling” not just domestically, but internationally. Foreign Policy’s police director says President Obama’s new defense guidelines embrace strategic decline. But House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon says “strategic decline” is the wrong term for it. The correct phrase he says, is “leading from behind”.
“This is a lead from behind strategy for a left-behind America. The President has packaged our retreat from the world in the guise of a new strategy to mask his divestment of our military and national defense. This strategy ensures American decline in exchange for more failed domestic programs. In order to justify massive cuts to our military, he has revoked the guarantee that America will support our allies, defend our interests, and defy our opponents. The President must understand that the world has always had, and will always have a leader. As America steps back, someone else will step forward.”
In a way the good news for the journalistic industry is that the worst is yet to come. President Obama’s strategy of “leading from behind” means that like Alice going down the rabbit hole they will all pop out again in some alternative universe where the excitement is back and history is on the move again. When things sufficiently tank enough there’ll be more drama than the New York Times can shake a stick at.
The spectators will start streaming back from the parking lot when news spread that the game has changed from football to one gigantic stadium-sized brawl. In that future the Times will have to revive promises of a pension to get their foreign correspondents to shake off that concussion and sally forth once more with the last surviving fast telephoto lens to win one more for the Gray Lady.
The drama will be back. But maybe we won’t like the form in which it will return.
The Three Conjectures at Amazon Kindle for $1.99
Storming the Castle at Amazon Kindle for $3.99
No Way In at Amazon Kindle $3.99, print $9.99
Malaise–or stoicism? And a quiet determination to persevere. Emphasis on “quiet.” In the Midwest people tend to think that loud complaining and the constant wringing of hands is rude, unmanly, and–most tellingly with respect to what it says about Midwestern culture and sensibilities–unproductive. I think Richard very badly misdiagnoses the mood (at least hereabouts) and how people are reacting to the situation. I repeat: quiet and determined to persevere.
Grammatical warning at last sentence. Also, no apostrophe in “astronauts”.
Update: Mr. F has fixed these things. Comment is now N/A.
The left has traded short-term expediency for the credibility of its media organs in a lunge for power. NPR, PBS, NYT, WaPo have abused the trust of their audiences and are all fading to niche status. Will the lunge succeed?
Wretchard: ” things fall apart, the center cannot hold…” and it will not. Wheather the crisis will come from North Korea, Iran, a new Palestinian/Arab – Israeli war, China taking Taiwan or all of the above, crisis will come, and Obama will practice appeasement, since by his own budget cuts that will be all he can do. Of course, this will not affect the outcome of the election in the US, Obama cannot lose that, but by the time 2013 rolls around the world will be a very scary place indeed.
Malaise–or stoicism? And a quiet determination to persevere. Emphasis on “quiet.”
You might be right about the malaise. The Telegraph has an interesting article on the “wearies” a new statistical category in Britain describing “Working, Entrepreneurial and Active Retirees” — people working into their seventies because they can’t afford to live on their pensions or savings.
But I might be right about the lack of drama in the news. It’s like people are turning inward to their own efforts and no longer hope to read a headline proclaiming that all their troubles are over and Happy Days Are Here Again.
I just think the mood of most people is not as grim and depressive as you seem to think. I think you may be projecting. Life for most people is in relative terms generally difficult and fraught with anxiety. It is at the same time filled with joy. The world has always been a scary place. You worry about your kids, your aging parents, your job. You deal with illness, unemployment, death. But you also find and do things that make you happy. You take the good with the bad. You adjust.
I do feel bad for these long term employees, at NYT and elsewhere who thought that the long term understandings were worth something.
I was fortunate to have read a book by Stephan Pollan called “Die Broke” when my career was getting started which helped me better understand the employee/employer relationship. The idea I took out of it was that we are each our own little .com. If I am an employee, as I am now and have been independant contracter, partner in a group enterprise, other things, I am still an independant agent marketing what I do. I do not owe loyalty nor should I expect it.
I find this attitude makes me better at my job which I have to sell every day. It helps me to plan for the future which is my own responsibility. It allows me mobility when I think I need that.
Appreciate what Roughcoat said. I am rust belt Midwestern. People work hard here when given the chance. Tomorrow is another working day.
I’m with Roughcoat pretty much. Americans consist mostly of people who don’t go writing, opining, editorializing, and commenting on this and that. The lack of a current crisis or latest thing doesn’t matter one whit in their lives but it is a big deal—or a job deal—to the chatterers, newsers, blow-dried talking heads. Their world may be phasing out but most of us are just getting it done, blocking and tackling. It’s often been commented here that that is the difference between Dems and Repubs (but not Incumbents).
And … Americans, besides being busy earning a living, etc, are slow to arouse but once you get their attention—remember the mule and the 2X4?—they tend to focus and get the job done. We’re probably in for a rough spell but, while I am apprehensive, I don’t have much serious doubt about the outcome.
Very well said, Gordon. Totally agree. “Blocking and tackling”–I like that. A lot.
Gosh, well, let’s start here, two articles in a local alternative newspaper about how the Los Angeles city government has – vanished. Public works refuses to report, city council does everything in secret and then votes unanimously, while developers clutter the city to impossible gridlock, property values continue to plunge, the school system becomes a joke, jobs long ago exited the city but continue to exit the state, etc, etc, etc.
http://www.laweekly.com/2012-01-05/news/Joe-Buscaino-Warren-Furutani-LA-city-council-race/
http://www.laweekly.com/2012-01-05/news/Los-Angeles-residents-sue-infrastructure-city-council/
Of course Los Angeles and California governments are now 110% Democratic. The state legislator froze solid about twenty years ago, hasn’t even attempted anything in that time, other than to dodge the occassional referendum. Public employee salaries have continued to climb slowly as if it was indeed an eternal party like it’s 1999 and the pensions are insupportable and absurd.
This is after all a freebie *alternative* newspaper observing that even the LATimes does little but complain about things. Now, the LAWeekly is, by measure of their words, further left than the LATimes has even been, BUT LAWeekly *is* “alternative” and not especially part of the privileged elite like the LATimes and (hey look I’ve worked back around to the actual topic!) the NYTimes.
Ten years ago the LAWeekly published serious political columns by major lefties like Harold Myerson and David Corn, who departed for better (non-zero?) paychecks but lately have vanished entirely, afaik, not that I have looked. Actually saw something by Myerson recently, come to think of it. Both are old-school leftists, with actual brains besides grievances and invective. I suppose that’s why they are out of touch with the left as it is today, they are out of style and probably cannot stomach the IDIOCY of the leftist positions, the lack of focus and coherence of OWS and the like, the disgusting stench of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and the total vapidity of Obambus.
Now, of course the old media is dying a double-death of disintermediation by the Internet and a lopsided leftism that is at total odds to their pretentions in recent better days, even through the Reagan 80s. It was the Clintoons who led the modern left too far into fraud and frivolity, I think, not that it hadn’t been out there before in Wilson days, and was not VERY much different, in retrospect, even in FDR days.
Of course *my* theory is that the left has put itself at odds with arithmetic, in Margaret Thatcher’s famous words about running out of other people’s money, and that’s about where we are. And the good news is that it’s been a wild ride, there is a LOT of money out there even now, such that just maybe even Obambus’ basic redistributive urges can be partially met – if they are simply addressed responsibly, honestly, competently.
Which gets me to my point, which is that the world has been on a rocket-ride of wildly improving technological progress for about a hundred years now, until most of the political system has come to expect it to continue and even accelerate (the technological singularity and all that). Well, guess what, maybe reality is that it’s just time to slow down a little. Acceleration can be negative long enough to bring velocity to zero, leaving us about where we are for the next ten years, twenty years, five hundred years, … haven’t been any new footsteps on the moon for FORTY YEARS, much less have we gone onto Mars. We’ve been exploring cyberspace and biospace, and letting the boondocks here on Earth catch up to the 19th and 20th centuries, and the 21st.
I’m not sure the news is any less positive overall, and maybe we can all do with a little less frantic, a little less war, just growing some corn and watching some football, waiting for these new LED bulbs to replace the CFLs much less the incandescents. Maybe we can focus on the REAL economic problems and fix the structural issues, instead of believing some wizard is going to save us all from ourselves.
… and then there is all this fracking gas and oil, that may indeed be set to save the entire world economy from itself for the next two generations. It’s more than we deserve, really.
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Well I’d just seen those LAWeekly articles so was sort of primed for this kind of topic, actually. I guess we can get back to the Republican debates and primaries and stuff anon.
I appreciate the rustbelt midwestern point of view, but I tend to agree with Wretchard. If enough Americans had that midwestern, stoic, resilient, self dependent attitude in the first place, we would not have Buraq Insane Obama as President.
That said there is kind of a resilience about most people. Most know that there is a ominous black cloud hanging over not only this country but the entire world. The list of really important things that have a high probability of going terribly wrong these days is a very long one. There is a kind of grim news fatigue; one can only listen so long about all the horrible events that could occur. Most have no choice but to put those things out of their mind and continue on as best they can. That’s all one can do.
I am not just blowing smoke here. I’m speaking from direct ongoing experience. My wife and I are just barely scraping by. We used to make lots of money and now we don’t know how we’ll make ends meet at the end of every month. We live literally from paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks are few and small. We take whatever paying work we can get. We freelance our butts off, we work harder than hell. Over the holidays my wife worked on the floor at Macy’s for $7 an hour; two years ago she was a vice president at a major Chicago ad agency pulling down six figures. We’ve talked with my sister about moving in with her if we lose the house. Meanwhile my 90 year old mom has dementia and is dying. Meanwhile … blah blah blah. Big deal, we can hack it. We’re in the front line trenches of this thing and you know what? Life is pretty good, all things considered. ALL things. Tough, but good. We have laughs, we have good times. We’ll make it, one way or the other.
4 and out. Brace up, people. Consider the lilies of the field. Consider your dogs.
when asked what the campaign slogan was to be for his re-election bid, the resident did not say- “We don’t have one”. He didn’t even say “We don’t have one, yet“, he says “We’re still working on it”…
About an accurate a slogan as anything else. As to what this administration is working on has been discussed and speculated on in detail, from, they are working to make sure decline of the U.S. becomes an irreversible fact and no longer some mere opinionated wishful thinking on the part of relativists and nihilists(e.g. “leading from behind”), to destroying our economy, Punishment of perceived opponents (political or otherwise), i.e.. The. Hugo. Chavez. Socialist. autocracy., all the way to “centrist”, “bi-partisan”, “vision”, “doing what’s beast for the country”, and all and sundry vague platitudes for mass consumption.
Brilliant analogy btw, the rabbit hole. Producing the proverbial Rabbit from the Hat is another, as to keeping the audience’s attention rapt and the tomatoes and raspberries at bay.
I think there is plenty of dramatic news out there, and its arc is visible at blogs like this one. However, the rainbow shimmering utopia that was to be ushered in by the light bringer has not materialized, and so the actual news does not fit the narrative. This has left the former “narrative managers” grasping in the wind. The future was so clear…
“Consider the lilies of the field. Consider your dogs.”
Good advice. Also, for what it’s worth, consider (re)reading The Gulag Archipelago.
Puts things in perspective. And reminds us why we don’t really want to go there.
Another good article and discussion, as usual.
I stopped watching TV news years ago. From my own personal experience I observed lies and purposeful distortions. TV news is dangerous because it’s very nature gives the illusion of truth. The big newspapers have a long history of biased reporting; Democrat newspapers report one way, Republican papers report another. I avoid both. Drudge and PJM provide me the information I want and usually provides links to get original source material. In anycase the Lame Stream Media appears to be dying out since most of their audience is the geritol set.
What I wanted to comment on is the mindset of the powerful elite as referenced by Wretchard. Specifically, The New York Times relationship with it’s own employees. It is a great paradigm for how the polital elite envision our future. Unionism for thee but not for me. The NYT has been a relentless advocate for unions everywhere for everyone, except for themselves. This is not the first run-in the NYT has had with it’s union. I remember a big stink years ago when the Times moved printing to a technologically modern facility in New Jersey that eliminated a whole lot of union jobs. Not that the Times does not have much of a choice. They are not attracting readers to their particular propaganda and are thus losing money. What cannot go on will not.
But Pinch will not miss a meal and neither will the top dogs. And that is the pattern for what the Democrats sell. The elites promise everything and some poor smucks buy into it. But those most reliant on the elites are the most in danger.
As has been mentioned, those of means and intelligence will find a way to adapt. At least they have the best chance. But we have to be aware of the dangers. The frog in the slowly boiling pot comes to mind. Also, as the society becomes broken the old systems break down. In the past we all knew we were being fleeced but the take was not so great so we went along. As self-preservation dictates different actions we will change our behavior to protect ourselves. Tax avoidence greek style comes to mind. If such behavior becomes ingrained in the culture it will become extrememly difficult to rebuild if we are ever given the chance.
At this point in time, I think everyone is holding their breath, and waiting for something to happen.
Will Obama be re-elected?
Will anyone emerge from the Republican primaries that will rally that party?
Are we truly in irrevocable decline as a country or can it be reversed?
There is a vast “lack of faith” in what we are told is the News Media. When Obama was elected in 2008, I predicted on a friend’s blog that the Media would have to go Orwellian to maintain the facade of substance of this incompetent person that was elected – and in that I think I am correct. I doubt I was alone in this, it wasn’t rocket surgery.
There are enough people alive in this country that have some objective notion of reality, and they have frankly given up believing in the “make-believe” America that exists in the Obama-verse of the Main Stream Media, or as it is sometimes called “Make Believe Media”.
For all the individual competence in writing that no doubt exists at the New York Times, that news organ of the Left has bankrupted its credibility with much of the reading public. The wealth and business interest of Carlos Slim is the only thing standing between those august writers and the unemployment line.
You would think that they would be thanking him.
Jean Shepherd 1966 slams a NYT radio ad featuring C.L.Sulzberger
real audio http://rhhardin.home.mindspring.com/shep.clsulzberger.rm
“His prose sounds like the ruins of Pompeii.”
The media are being abandoned because even their soap opera audience is spotting the condescending presentation.
If news stops working with the soap opera audience, then there’s no viable business model for news at all.
“There is no longer the parade of diplomatic cliffhangers; they’ve all gone over the cliff. ”
That long fall is not as dramatic as the landing.
When I get depressed I think about Tina Turner (born 1939) or Deborah Ann Harry (born 1945). Both still going strong;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj8wKh2hVW0&feature=related
Her teats sag to her knees and she avoids the more difficult vocals but she’s still in the game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6w8YdhTvnY
Tina, a few months shy of her 70th birthday. Strutting with her teenage supporting cast. Her vocals wont raise the hair on your neck any more but she’s still better then Lady Gaga. IMHO.
This is the lull before the storm. That slow quiet late summer of ’39.
America isn’t even 4 times older then Tina. Like the Queen of Nutbush, America has a kick or two left in her.
#16 Black Bart
What I wanted to comment on is the mindset of the powerful elite as referenced by Wretchard.
If you haven’t read Fred Siegel and Joel Kotkin’s article in City Journal on “The New Authoritarianism,” you might want to have a look at it: http://www.city-journal.org/2012/eon0106fsjk.html
Isn’t it inspiring to know that our (presumed) betters think of us as “a nation of dodos”?
#21. PA Cat
I submit to you, for whatever its worth, that civilizations fall when the ruling elites cease to have any interest for the welfare of the little people who provide the goods and services who provide the basis for the existence of that civilization. Once they become a mere resource to be milked for whatever they produce without any thought of what it will take to keep them alive and producing the game is essentially over. Its a death spiral.
Once the parasite becomes more valued than the host the end is in sight.
We are there.
“It has the air of a blowout; where many had hoped the game would be close, the audience is leaving the stands for the parking lot because the bad guys have everything all but sewn up.”
I know what you mean. In the past, I’ve found election years to be rife with drama, feauring lots of engagement and passion. This year, the feeling seems to be “wake me up in November so I can vote for Mitt”.
The whole centralized economic planning thing is looking like it is going to crash world wide. The question for me is what is going to be the nature of the crash? A domino effect, a cascade where one falls off the mountain of debt and pulls all the others off quickly. Or will it be slow enough that some can cut ropes, drive spikes, and perhaps get situated to help some of their fellow climbers get off the mountain?
When I was young I spent 4 years in an art school, getting a BFA. Many people in the school at that time were what we would call politically correct. Outside the school there was none of that, as America still possessed a lot of common sense though that era of the 70s was pretty much the end of it.
Today America is suffused with political correctness and young people especially, where ever I go seem like those old art students, repeating buzzwords as if they were brainwashed, challenging things no longer there to be challenged and so easy to do. Anything that needs to be challenged is not as it is not politically correct to have resolve and surety as this is considered opinionated arrogance unless rubber stamped by the many.
America has lost confidence in itself and its own success, as if almost embarrassed by its effortless brilliance.
#22 Tcobb
That was my take on the CJ article too.
I think people have tuned out because they no longer believe the crap they see or trust the media, not because they have resigned themselves to the inevitable.
I don’t see a nation of exhausted, hopeless people speckled across a wasted landscape. I see the opposite, a nation of people brimming with confidence – in themselves, but not the government or even much of the leadership of industry. A nation of people who does not equate the US Military with the rest of the Federal Bureaucracy, the people at the local DMV and the denizens of DC. A nation whose attitude is mostly defined by a motto we had at the entrance of one military unit I was a member of: “Lead, Follow, or Get The Hell Out of The Way!”
But it is nation that also is angry, that feels betrayed, and thinks the crooks and traitors have not gotten 1% of what they deserve in retribution.
It is a nation that is armed to the teeth, that will not take the guns out of the closet hastily but once that line is crossed not put them back too quickly, either.
Last week on Rush Limbaugh he had some OWS supporter on, a kid not long out of college who kept whining “It’s not supposed to be this way!” He said he had to work 4 part time jobs to make ends meet, and one was a bouncer at a gay nightclub while another was a nude model for an art class. He railed against the undue influence of “the corporations” even as he complained he did not have a good job. He had majored in journalism but found little work in that field.
Well, gee, I work 4 part time jobs, too. And I guess that one of them is more or less as a journalist; I have written and been paid for articles based on interviews with WWII veterans about their experiences. And it gave those guys a thrill to see their stories in print, too, which was the best part.
And I just saw something on TV that was disturbing. It was a Pro-Romney attack ad on Newt Gingrich that cited, among other things, the ethics charges against Newt. Of course, those charges were later found by a House panel to be untrue. Romney better get control of his TV ads.
rwe @ 27: I don’t see a nation of exhausted, hopeless people speckled across a wasted landscape. I see the opposite, a nation of people brimming with confidence – in themselves, but not the government or even much of the leadership of industry.
Well, but is that the confidence of people educated where everyone gets a prize?
On the one hand I agree with Roughcoat and the optimistic view that many normal people are still normal people.
On the other hand I have ranted here often about the total dysfunction I see at Megabank and most everywhere I go these days, the winner-take-all structure of corporations that outsource everything and raise CEO salaries for doing so, the moral hazard of the banksters paying themselves billions for their enterprise and then not responsible for trillions in losses they caused. Note that it is also these banksters who grew up where everybody gets a prize, “deserves” a prize, has a RIGHT to a prize, no matter the effects on others. Not that the behavior is new, it is timeless, but in the past it took a sociopath to do it, now (almost) everyone is trained that way.
What I hope, balancing this, is that we are still so filthy rich as a national and world culture, we can afford such nonsense. For a while longer. Though, perhaps not. Perhaps we were just rich enough to afford it right up until Feb 2008. Well, here comes fracking – but perhaps the scale of the thievery is now up to sucking that as fast as it is created, that is part of the lesson of 2008, if it has not always been true, look at Ghaddafi’s (alleged) fortunes, and Mubarrak’s. BTW, what ever happened to all that money? For that matter, what ever happened to all the money generated by oil from Iraq over the last five years?
White House threw secret ‘Alice in Wonderland’ bash during recession
Res ipsa loquitur.
The thing for most of us here is we never have suffered a whole lot (other than the self imposed suffering birthed by our own stupidity) . Most of the WWII generation has reached the end of the road, We’ve had it good a long time and I wonder how many of us have the intestinal fortitude for a few years of darkness. We might find out before too long. I’d say find a community of people who have your back, prepare as best you can, we will get through this, or we won’t.
Agreed. Time to stop debating Roughcoat as to my ‘schtick’ (sounds like he has a lot more on his plate than I do — praying for ya buddy) and start prepping. As the guest host with the deep baritone on Coast to Coast AM says, “God, guns, food, guts.”
Besides, what do I know? The MSM says Romney has already won — hell people I know in MSM personally have been saying that since forever, long before we decreed that a caucus where only a tiny percentage of the full state electorate participate where no IDs are required should determine the frontrunner for the other 49 states.
I wish to hell Texas or Florida would go first AND demand that every caucusgoer or primary participant show ID. The GOP would look a lot less hypocritical and determined to pad it for a candidate only 25% max of all GOP voters actually want.
There was a complex of reasons people voted for Obama. Has enough happened in the last four years to change a sufficient number of minds?
Can those who voted for him admit, even to themselves, what happened? If they can’t, will they change their vote?
I have a sneaking feeling that the resentments tied up in the Obama vote are reinforced. Obama was going to Do Stuff, mostly to Bad People, like bitter clingers and those who wanted to keep their own money, and things would go right. But since things haven’t gone right, perhaps it’s because Obama hasn’t Done Stuff with sufficient vigor against the Bad People and we need four more years to do it.
I suspect there is plenty of news – as much as there ever was. But the news media often don’t present news – something that is pointed out here and in may other places by commentators. Much of the time the media uses events to spin a fable about a world where events happen the way the news media wishes they happened. It’s an imagined world whose values are the values that the media wished held sway. The fable doesn’t resonate with the customers the way it used to because it isn’t about the world that the customers live in. Besides, the customers have heard the same tired old spinning wheel creak fifty million times.
#24. toadold
The whole centralized economic planning thing is looking like it is going to crash world wide. The question for me is what is going to be the nature of the crash?
It all depends. I suspect it will all work out well if the people who advocated and administered such planning are thrown down to a level where they can never rise to such positions again, otherwise they will hide in the shadows and climb again to plague the world when the stars are right (or wrong as the case may be) again.
The signature of the totalitarian, soft or hard, Stalinist or Nanny Stater, is their utter inability to entertain the notions that they could ever be wrong and that they are not the crowns of creation.
As I recall, those were the principal faults of Satan as well.
“we would not have Buraq Insane Obama as President.”
Not sure about that.
The fix was in from the get go. A Candidate with NO Credentials, No accomplishments, a vague and shadowy past who basically stole the Democratic nomination. Remember, Hill-De-Beast had more delegates, Obama won with the “Super delegates” (AKA Party Flacks).
Then there was the ‘October surprise’ which was a very strange stock market crash. Remember that? It led to TARP which put us where we are today.
Co-Ink-See-Dink? I think not but your milage may vary.
On the other hand, America starts drilling for OIL and Fracking everything in sight and we will be OK. Until then we have the Hooters Car Wash to keep us occupied;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svQ2Ys3Jl3s&feature=related
Or was that preoccupied?
Agree with trangbang68. I suspect he and I have visited a few of the same places in the late 60′s. I have read, if I recall correctly, that less than one percent or some such low number of the population is serving in the armed forces. Few of us have seen adversity and life’s danger in ways that allow us to know what will be coming at us in the next few years. Where is that person that will call forth “To Arms, To Arms” and will there be any there hear?
P.S. put this in the ‘fake but accurate’ dept of provokatsey, not unlike this dude in the Punisher hat who says ‘I sucker punched Jesse Ventura and ran away, ran away! And that makes me cool’
http://images.politico.com/global/2012/01/cando_com_analysis.html
GOODBYE
The world is changing, the culture is shifting, possibly in ways we cannot as yet understand. Nonetheless, it is time to say goodbye to Liberalism, the nanny state, the New York Times and Barack Obama.
Emmylou: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OomaNxkY-KY&feature=related
I remember, holding on to you
Holding on, my whole life through
Yes I know, sometimes you made me cry
But I can’t remember if we said goodbye
And I recall when the sky was the purest blue
And the words that you said were true
At least so you said
And I recall all the weird things you used to do
When the world was there just for you
And now you’re put to bed
I will miss you, every now and then
And I hope we’ll not see you again
And sometimes I break down and cry
‘Cause I waited too long to say goodbye
Yes I waited too long to say goodbye
The news is more than you see on tv. I left Detroit because of the very apparent demise of society there during the Carter years. I ended a three month search across the USA in Dallas. Texas has an attitude of can-do spirit and it was refreshing. I can tell you that after 8 relocations to five different states due to promotions, I am now in Oklahoma working for a multi-national. The people I know may not be tuned into the news, but they do contribute to local relief efforts, they belong to gyms, the marathons are filled out events. In other words, participation in labor intense activity is normal and whining is not. Folks know that effort is neccessary for reward and that even then, success is fleeting. I am not a bitter clinger, I am a happy one.
Is a world dying? Sure, especially those who hitched their wagons to a failed ideology and a decadent culture. We hear their wail of woe and it can be disheartening even to those not entranced by their dreams. I was born in the mid-50’s and there is much gone that I mourn; jazz, large families, musical theater, women in dresses, westerns, unsupervised youth, cars with fins and Sunday dinner at Grandma’s. Is it all gone? No. Is there much still to treasure and preserve? Yes. Are dreams still available for the young? My adult children give me a defiant and determined, yes.
Modern leftism is so reactionary all its dreams are in the past. The leftist god is dying and without that god they are lost. Like some prehistoric forbearer will Homo Marxii become extinct? Maybe, but the human weakness that drives their fantasies will remain. Some new ideology driven by resentment, envy and the sheer joy some find in bossing others will arise.
Nevertheless, I believe as insistent reality intrudes many are awakening and are seeing the world anew. I believe mental chains are being broken and spirits are being set-free. Many from the church of the Left will find it all too threatening and discomfiting. But those are dying congregations and will dwindle and diminish. Others will choose reality and life. With their new understanding they will reconsider eternal truths. They will seek and they will find.
I’m not deluded enough to think this will be simple or pain free. There will be much pain. Most of it will be felt by those following their false idols but there will also be many, either innocent or unaware who will be tried. I don’t see how it all can be avoided as we experience Tom Wolfe’s Great Relearning. But we will learn and much folly will be put aside.
Some may think me foolishly optimistic. I prefer to follow the lead of my favorite President.
I was so disappointed to hear one our local AM stations here in Houston had gone away from what always seemed to be an objective news driven format to a very partisan right wing one. This is the station that everyone turns to during a time of crisis, a weather emergency, etc… They were one of the last media holdouts but I guess that commercial model must not work any more.
Looks as if the WH press corps covered up a White House event so as not to embarrass the Obama’s. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/in_blunderland_hKpNQkHfvpEWe4F51kI4dP
Substitute any Republican for Mr. “Skin in the Game-Sacrifice for the Greater Good,” and see how long this would have been under wraps.
What is so stunning about the MFM is they don’t realize how stupid they look. The word “hack” is nowhere near sufficient to describe this crows. Stephanopoulos is Democrat operative; David Gregory is a pig-ignorant caricature of himself and Diane Sawyer has never been more than a “lip experiment gone horribly wrong.”
@40 One of the successes of the legacy media in their long march to influence the electorate has been their ability to frame every every point of view except their own (and coincidently, of the Democrat party) as “extreme”, or “right wing”. Pace the Blues Brothers, if you asked them what kind of politics we have here, they would say “oh we have both kinds, liberal AND progressive). About 50% of us fell for it hook line and sinker. Our founding documents, free markets, unfettered individual liberties, and the right to defend ourselves are in fact the central ideas underpinning the world’s greatest and most successful experiment in self government. They are not “right wing” or racist or selfish, they are smack dab in the center of the political spectrum, as defined in America by its revolution and resulting constitution. So you might do well to listen to that reformatted radio station. Or not. Its not like you have to, its not the DMV or the IRS or the TSA or anything, its the private sector. I find a useful guide for media products is to look at their business models. Limbaugh’s model was to create a product and find sponsors who would underwrite his air time based on his ability to get people to tune in and listen. Air America’s model was to buy radio stations and make them play their programming, whether anyone wanted to hear it or not. One of these models failed miserably and left bankruptcy, hurt individuals and litigation in its wake. The other created wealth and success. Your mileage may vary.
OK but here’s a thing, it’s not like centralized planning is failing because of economics, it’s failing because of politics and human nature. It pretends to add rationality, it fails when it fails to do so. But here’s the thing, there is ever more quantitative modeling and more optimized systems, which when well done ADD to the design margin rather than shave it down to nothing in the interests of profit. Automobile engineering is worlds better today than fifty years ago, many economic activities are in inventory management and such. The banksters pretended this is what they were doing with CDS and MBS and CDO and SIV – which were all NFG. Rationality is a dangerous tool and can cut either way.
westerncanadian, in response to something deep down the last thread and my ranting about bringing back jobs from China, I am prescribing some form of protectionism, and I know it has costs, but apparently we have no choice, there are costs to the current system as well. We also have a good model of successful protectionism, the domestic content rules for automobiles. I’ll bet most would agree we would like to have some more domestic emphasis on energy production. We need to rationalize and expand our quantitative mathematical models to show why this is necessary and how to do it, need to expand the time frames and include externalized costs. The old models are too simple, and wrong. It *will* cost something, there is no doubt, but one has to pay the cost of whatever the minimum system is for survival, cutting costs beyond that is just not a good idea.
Speaking of which, there is this video that Newt’s PAC is supposed to show tomorrow revealing the “truth” about Romney, the accusation being that the 100,000 jobs he created – were in Mexico and Asia, NOT the US. If this is verified, I think we say buh-bye to Mitt. Should be the hot topic tomorrow.
–
ps – RIP Tony Blankley
The NYT will be dead as an influential organ when people stop describing it as being dead. Hasn’t happened yet.
PS: I don’t read it either.
I do not know that there is a lack of drama in the news these days so much as the fact that the Gray Lady is a one hit wonder with just one story to tell that it has been telling ad nauseam now for 40 years. History has not come screeching to a halt but the NY Times short term memory somewhere along the line was destroyed. Since then the Times cannot remember what happened this morning but can clearl relate every detail of what the reported about Watergate.
43. Josh
Competition is lots of fun and a great thing when you are winning, as the U.S. used to do. Competition is miserable and a bad idea when you’re losing. Protectionism always gains favour with those who can’t compete. Once you adopt protectionism it never goes away.
Here in Canada we have some dopey managed supply systems in dairy products. We have a central Milk Marketing Board. To protect the dairy producers we have humongous tariffs on foreign dairy products. The result is we pay twice what you pay for milk. Cheese is very expensive in Canada and the types of cheese are limited. Anything made from protected dairy products, like pizza, also costs the consumer more.Because the Board sets milk quotas, new entrants have to buy quota from existing farmers and the value of a farmers quota often exceeds the value of his herd. Before a farmer can increase his dairy herd he has to buy more quota. The extra revenue that the farmers get from being protected is taken away by the cost of the quota. Guess what; quota prices rise just to the point where they take all the extra revenue from protected prices away.
Now, getting rid of managed supply for dairy products would impoverish every existing dairy farmer because it would wipe out the value of their quota that they had to finance with bank loans. No politician wants to face the screams from the dairy farm lobby and get rid of the whole thing. The only chance for our salvation is from our competitors who won’t let us join international trade groups unless we drop our milk tariffs to equal their milk tariffs. That would allow a politician to blame other people for making him/her do something sensible.
The U.S. is hurting partly because it can no longer compete with low cost areas. The proper response is to work hard and think hard to come up with ways to compete successfully. These ways may not be through direct head to head cost matching but by inventing new products or manufacturing processes. Problem is the progressive PC smart guys have strangled U.S. innovators and U.S. industry with millions of killing regulations. Government is making darn sure that America continues to be out competed.
Protectionism is the last refuge of those who can’t or won’t compete and it gives immense power to industrial lobbies and “stakeholders”. After the first five minutes it only makes things worse because the protected industries can’t survive without protection and in the long run, they can’t survive with protection. I give you Solyndra and hippy light bulbs as examples. Solyndra went bust in spite of massive government protection. As for hippy light bulbs, people will only buy them if the competition is banned and forced out of the market. Government should get out of the way and free American businesses to come up with ways to compete instead of forcing American businesses to be losers. It’s downright depressing.
I hope this diatribe makes sense because it’s certainly making me smile at myself.
Obama and Detroit. Two great examples of failed leadership. And no good ideas. How long before one or the other gets the good idea to tax all those Nigerian scam offers to share wealth that was illegally got? It sure beats selling debt to the Chinese.
“I am prescribing some form of protectionism, and I know it has costs, but apparently we have no choice, ”
Correct.
The Free Trade in cheap stuff from China we currently enjoy in underwritten by 3 things.
1) Fairly Cheap oil which makes shipping goods across the world economical
2) The US Navy keeping the worlds shipping lanes safe from cargo vessels
3) Chinese Currency policy / manipulation.
We (The USA and Aust) will go back to manufacturing things ourselves out of necessity.
So I recommend loading up on traded goods ASAP. Buy your whitegoods, tools, fishing and camping gear, bicycles (these will be REAL valuable) with the mindset that they might have to last you your lifetime, (and you will have to know how to maintain them). For me this means buying stuff made in Taiwan and Japan as opposed to Chinese Stuff.
OK but here’s a thing, it’s not like centralized planning is failing because of economics, it’s failing because of politics and human nature. It pretends to add rationality, it fails when it fails to do so…We need to rationalize and expand our quantitative mathematical models to show why this is necessary and how to do it, need to expand the time frames and include externalized costs. The old models are too simple, and wrong
Models, by definition, are small imitations of a real thing. They are not the thing itself, and they never can be. They can, if accurate, be important tools to help one understand reality, but should be instantly rejected once they conflict with it. But it is much easier to believe in the model you can understand rather than the reality it is supposed to represent. Reality, unlike human beings, has little respect for models. But people become so enamored of their models that they tend to reject any fact that conflicts with it.
Thats the kind of trashy thinking that got us to where we are today. If our voodoo doll model is the “truth” all we have to do is stick the right pins in it at the right locations and reality will bend to accommodate the plunger’s wishes. Just like the geniuses that thought the Keynesian model worked before and would work now. What about that stimulus thing? How is that working out?
Its amazing how the American economy bloomed in the past without people intent upon improving it with moves based upon the models devised by the best and brightest. I think we should go back to that and relegate those who believe in them to the ranks of astrologers and fortune tellers where they so richly belong.
And I’m sorry, but I think all economic models are inherently trash and garbage. All the tiny aggregate of what makes them up–human beings–will change their behavior to accommodate to the model in order to game the system and avoid pain which will invalidate some core axiom upon which the economic model was based.
Economics isn’t chess–its more like Calvin Ball.
I’m always amazed by the local paper in Roanoke, Virginia. It is a prestigious newpaper that has won numerous journalism awards. Roanoke is a dynamic little city, but if all you had to go by was The Roanoke Times you’d never know it. I’m sure the paper’s staff are earnest and no doubt filled with idealism, indeed that shows readily. The trouble is that they seem not to live in the Roanoke Valley but rather in the spinward marches of the New York Times orbital system. Denizens of the Star City of the South sometimes wonder how the paper arrived on their doorstep, by way of which planet? This is the queen newsrag of southwestern Virginia, yet it has somehow managed to come out for repeal of the 2nd Amendment. Its readers aren’t necessarily its target audience, it seems (unless you count the ‘activist’ readers). Nor are the readers, even, a subject the paper seems much interested in covering (again, unless you count the activists). The paper is squarely aimed for whoever the New York Times is aimed for.
Journalists are pack animals these days, maybe they always were. The NYT is the leader of the pack, not only for print but for broadcast, too. On the campaign trail I used to see this all the time. A story would come along, the press corps would come to it, the NYT guy would give his take on it at some point, and this would become everybody’s take on it. Try as you might, you’d have a hard day pulling even one off it, facts or anything else be damned. Your local reporters would file his story along the NYT lines, or else your local paper would run the AP story filed there along the NYT lines. Pure groupthink.
The groupthink extends beyond the individual stories into the general editorial direction. Editors constitute a professional clique with their own set of assumptions and world views held in common. They all drink from the same well.
The New York Times has needed to be knocked down a peg or fifty for quite some time now, as should be obvious to anyone after their string of “public services” constitued by their serial releasing of classified information effecting national security.
That, and all Dept of Education grants to the Kaplan, Inc groups should be immediately curtailed forever, then bye-bye Washington Post (Pravda on the Potomac).
westerncanadian @ 46 said:
“Protectionism is the last refuge of those who can’t or won’t compete and it gives immense power to industrial lobbies and “stakeholders”. After the first five minutes it only makes things worse because the protected industries can’t survive without protection and in the long run, they can’t survive with protection.”
I completely agree with the above statement. However trade with China is a special case for three reasons:
1) China’s disregard for intellectual property.
2) China’s disregard for the environment.
3) Chinese factories tending to be sweatshops.
There is no way an American semiconductor fabrication plant can compete against a Chinese competitor if the American plant is required to meet strict environmental laws while the Chinese plant is not.
There is no way an American DVD manufacturer can compete against a Chinese competitor if the American manufacturer is paying a copyright royalty while the Chinese DVD manufacturer is not.
There is no way a labor intensive American manufacturer can compete against a Chinese competitor if the American manufacturer is paying a living wage while the Chinese manufacturer is running a sweatshop.
Trade protectionism is counter-productive if it merely serves to protect industries weak due to poor management, socialism or trade unionism. However trade protectionism is appropriate when the competitor is not acting ethically.
stoicheion @ 34 said:
“Then there was the ‘October surprise’ which was a very strange stock market crash. Remember that? It led to TARP which put us where we are today.”
The “October surprise” was too well timed to be pure coincidence (it effectively killed McCain’s election campaign). The Lehman Brothers debacle set the stage but someone with George Soros level of financial power was able to push the system over the edge and create a crisis at precisely the right moment thus insuring Obama’s election. The people on the inside must know who this person was and that the motivation was political. My guess is that conservatives with economic power comparable to George Soros are prepared to play the same trick on Obama during this election cycle. IMHO, it’s probable that the economy will double dip on its own without special help (probably get pulled down by Europe or some trick played by the Iranians). However if by some miracle, the economy is ticking along nicely in September, someone will pull the plug and create just enough economic pain to insure that Obama is not reelected. Given this likelihood, it is vital that the right guy gets nominated by the Republicans. Unfortunately, Romney is not the right guy.
wc @ 46: I hope this diatribe makes sense because it’s certainly making me smile at myself.
It’s a lovely recitation BUT it’s right out of my econ 1 textbook from 40 years ago, and not much of what’s in there seems to work anymore, if it ever did. I will stand on my reductio of comparative advantage – if *everything* is cheaper in China, then the equation fails, the only alternative is that equilibrium is forced, which in this case forces US costs to fall by some huge factor immediately, and salaries by some equally huge factor. Right? Otherwise it might mean we have to reduce 200,000,000 Americans to tenth century technology for the next generation, to match the distribution in China. The trick is to avoid this textbook equilibrium, say by only reducing 100,000,000 Americans to tenth century technology. Better, right? Textbook does say you can do that at cost, I take that basic mathematical model as more foundational than a comparative advantage that only works near equilibrium. This is a more modern mathematics than Ricardo has, reflecting dissipative systems theory, deterministic chaos, differential models instead of linear. Math continues to hold, but not the traditional version of Ricardo, not away from equilibrium. Something like relativity over Newton – indistinguisable at low velocities, different at the limits. No doubt this is all wildly speculative and I have no bona fides in any of these areas, but what else is the Internet for?
51. Eggplant
Regarding DVD manufacture. When DVDs were the new thing the profit margins allowed U.S. manufacturers to compete. Once DVD’s became a commodity then the low cost producers captured the market. Dirty tricks might hasten that capture but it’s inevitable, even competing with low cost angels. It was always so with manufacturing.
As a side issue, many U.S. environmental regulations may be unnecessary so there might be a shooting oneself in the foot there. Regulations that unnecessarily increase any production costs (like energy) are also self inflicted wounds.
In general, high cost production areas can only survive by constantly creating new products and processes. Once a new product turns into just another commodity, then low cost producers will capture the market. So the trick might be to invent a better replacement for DVD’s and succeed with that new product until it, in turn becomes a commodity. Video tapes were replaced by DVD’s and something will surely replace DVD’s. The price for a high standard of living is the need for constant creativity.
Today the bogeyman is China but its own success will raise China’s labour and other costs and some other area will take China’s place as the low cost sweatshop of the world. As the world’s wealth increases, sweatshop status (like indexes of poverty) will become more relative than absolute, which is a good thing.
As the originators or first heirs of the Industrial Revolution, the West became rich and also became the high labour cost producers. To stay rich we have to write a never ending story of constant invention and creativity. Government has to allow us to venture into the risky unknown instead of nannying us and trapping us in the safe bubble of the known.
I fell off my soap box twice already and hurt my ankle, so I’m going to quit.
52. Josh
This is my fourth comment and if I don’t respond it means I am disqualified from further thought. Therefore I am not responding. Besides, I think that the Mercator Projection makes a Canadian mile longer than an American mile on the map so everything up here, including thinking takes longer and it’s late.
We know that people 200 years from now will read newspaper archives and scholarly tomes and have no clue as to what happened or why. Here is the kicker question. Why do we think that we know anything about the past?
WC — I always thought the best case scenario for Russia would be to wind up as a bigger, Eurasian version of Canada. With a big St. Herman of Alaska bridge connecting Chuhotka to North America. Maybe we’ll get there by 2100, though by then the Chinese President Wen PaO Bama might start blocking pipelines from the North due to alleged environmental problems and decide to buy oil and gas from Brazil instead.
EOT
westerncanadian @ 53 said:
“Video tapes were replaced by DVD’s and something will surely replace DVD’s. The price for a high standard of living is the need for constant creativity.”
As an aside, there is a need for stable permanent storage technology of datasets over a terabyte in size that allows for rapid access (less than 5 minutes to read the entire dataset). CT scan datasets for a single object are typically about 50 gbytes. Blu-Ray BD-R DL media can hold about 50 gbytes. Unfortunately Blu-Ray BD-R is expensive, unstable and takes eons to read-and-write. For doing CT scan work (spacecraft aeroshells), we’re forced to used external hard-drives (magnetic platter) with USB access. With USB external hard-drives, data access is still slow and if I drop the hard-drive on the floor, I say “goodbye” to my data. Some genius needs to cook up a crystal storage technology (holographic) where many lasers can interrogate a crystal lattice at the same time. The crystal would be about the size of a golf ball, hold about a terabyte of data and not require special handling. Whoever can crack that technological nut will surely make piles of money.
Hello, Fellow Babies,
Let me begin with a heartfelt, Christmassy sentiment. Gentle people, and friends, yet again I find myself in impressed, refreshed, and more than a little jealous at the depth of the discussion and the keen insights of the host and all the participants. Honest, cross my heart. I rarely contribute, but I always want to. I’m sure none of you think that you are merely providing entertainment; but as a group, my brother and I find this blog to be the most consistently exciting forum on the net. I say this because by day he is a mild mannered, teacher of computer graphics and animation at a local university, but at night he dons his super PJs and reads and blogs. Ignoring the TV, he can spend three hours reading —- after working at the computer all day. It has become commonplace to find that at most any internet site, no matter the subject, that to venture a thought is to be instantly flamed by some anonymous moron; and I wanted to take a moment to tell all of you how grateful and proud that we have not descended to that level. I am impressed with the wide-ranging intellect, professions, careers, and and experiences of my fellow Belmontians… that has somehow lead us to share some general sense of consensus and intellectual fellowship. That is profound because to me, it seems that as inevitably as rising brooks and streams eventually flow to a greater river, life experience should lead to universal recognition of certain Truths. I just wanted to express once again my pride in you, and my pleasure to be a citizen of the realm.
It is an oft’ quoted thought that if monkeys were confined to cages with an abundance of typewriters, that they could eventually reproduce Shakespeare. This is really freaking sad… the truth is that men and Democrats have populated cyberspace, and most have only managed to rediscover the simian habit of hurling their own feces….
From Wretchard’s discussion of the NY Times, PA Cat #21, and Tcobb #22 I was reminded of the sinking of the Titanic. In reading the history of the event, the reader eventually will grasp a truth that most historians have been reluctant to admit. A series of court inquiries found no fault with the captain and crew. The view of the newspapers of the age was firmly fixed on the doings of the rich, the Hollywood set, and other famous personalities of the day, with scant interest in the lives of those hapless multitudes that toiled in the dirt and grease of factories and farms. It may appear that the news media has developed a heart, but media interest in the lives of the poor and working class masses is only to exploit their misfortune as entertainment for Cops and Jerry Springer fans, or as a fast route to Pulitzer Prize Land. The unconscious bigotry of the age that shaped the ultimate course of the tragedy had very little interest in the fate of the poorer class of passengers until years after the event. Whatever the claims — that the Titanic was scheduled have been supplied with additional emergency equipment, on it’s maiden voyage, all of it’s lifeboats were located on the upper decks. The cabins, dining room, ball rooms, and bars of the upper decks were the exclusive domain of the first class passengers, and were off–limits to the lesser lights that inhabited the cheap cabins below. There were only enough life boats for the passengers in first class. There were locked doors barring third and second class passengers from reaching he first class decks. That the vast proportion of the survivors were the wealthy passengers from the first class cabins — with a few lucky, second class passengers. There were almost no survivors from third class. So John Jacob Astor, industrialist B. Guggenheim, Macy’s owner Isidor Straus, transportation magnate G. Dunton, railroad executives John Thayer and Charles Hays, etc. etc. with their valets and servants survived, where immigrant families from Ireland and Britain perished.
The elites have made provision for their own survival. They do not see their fortune or fate as bound in any way to the fortune and fate of the gray masses — that’s the rest of us. Generations ago a senator’s son might enter the service, albeit as some aide to ranking officer unlikely to tour anywhere near combat. Not now, look in vain for that. I would remind you that one of the stories of 1992 was the discovery that the Government had built ***a 5 star shelter*** under the GreenBrier Hotel — exclusively to shelter members of Congress and their families in the event of nuclear war. This could be rationalized if the government had constructed bomb shelters for the general public with even a remote semblance of the zeal and extravagence that was used in the construction of Greenbrier. Nope. Nada. Civil Defense for the general public was in the provision of gas masks, hand-held geiger counters, and potassium iodide tablets stored in the dimly-lit basements of 1950s downtown buildings. At best the government planners designed the Civil Defense system to protect a tiny fraction of the American public. And in a cold, grim, dim basement crowded and crammed with any citizens that might survive on a diet of crackers and tins of spam. Where were the pools, the libraries, the bars, the saunas, the plush lounges, the dining halls ready to serve Duck a l’Orange? The Greenbrier Shelter was designed to keep Congress alive and partying at level to which they had become accustomed.
There have been roughly about 56,000 Congressmen and 11,200 Senators that have served over the last 200 years. Clearly the offices do not require a skill much beyond the minimum competence of knotting a tie and fastening one’s belt… Oh wait, Congressman Weiner… We could replace every last one of them overnight, and they would soon be fully engaged — within a month. Well, they could certainly be better than the 111th Congress. Surely we don’t need a gold-plated, super shelter to house these clowns in such gargantuan magnificence? But that’s not how the Elites think.
I have no doubt that there exists a new and even more lavish “Greenbriar” shelter that has been constructed elsewhere with new, even tighter secrecy provisions. Buy there is nothing in the actions of Nancy (got her own jet) Pelosi and the 111th Congress that allows any doubt on my part; the Elite will retreat to their gated communities and underground bunkers and continue to eat cake as the rest of us grind through the coming hard times; just as the Elites of the Middle Age retired to their castles to party and cavort as the plague raged through the lower classes.
The only surprise is that we Americans have always thought that we are a single, united community. It’s a slowly dawning, nasty realization that we have in fact got a ruling class, that does not care about the ideals, hopes, language, or ethnicity of of the American citizen (soon to be subjects) as long as they can retain their leadership,
Color me shocked, shocked that the management of the NY Times would extend generous pensions to retiring senior management while cutting off the rabble of lower management, peons, and serfs. It was ever thus.
To arms, to Arms!
On FOX yesterday, I saw some numb-skull get her panties all wadded up by the prospect of the Mad Dog Mullahs sinking a tanker in the Straits of Hormuz and blocking it….
I sent FOX an E-mail pointing out that you could drop New York City in the Straits of Hormuz and not block it off. It didn’t make it past the censors.
The MSM is in trouble because of ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ and the overuse of their gatekeeper function. General, all around, dumb as dirt ignorance doesn’t help their cause either.
There are many interesting things happening in the world today. You won’t see them on the MSM because those events do not fit the agenda of the MSM. Consumers sense that agenda and are turned off by it.
What depresses me about the MSM destroying themselves is they are taking down the rest of us also. It’s like they haven’t figured out that the first thing Socialists do after taking over is line the other socialists up against the wall. Then they play ‘Mexican Drug Lord’ with them.
That’s my 4 so I’m Winchester and RTB.
Hello, Fellow Babies,
F 47 I’ll bet our government is behind the Nigerian scams. A quick way to hose up any money left after taxes.
Josh @52
I will stand on my reductio of comparative advantage – if *everything* is cheaper in China, then the equation fails, the only alternative is that equilibrium is forced, which in this case forces US costs to fall by some huge factor immediately, and salaries by some equally huge factor. Right?
No. Both countries benefit from trade so long as their relative efficiencies (in producing various products) differ. This does not mean “relative to the other country”; it refers to the relative efficiencies within each country. For example, suppose that it costs China twice as much to make a pair of shoes as to make a shirt, and the same is true in the US. In that case, for either either country to shift resources from shoe production to shirt production or vice-versa, and to make up the loss with trade, would be pointless.
If that situation existed with all products, this would prevent the US from exporting, but it would also prevent it from importing, so there would be no forcing down of US costs to the Chinese level. Costs would increase, since Americans couldn’t buy anything from China. This implies greater poverty, but it does not imply forcing costs down to the Chinese level.
#22 Tcobb
> I submit to you, for whatever its worth, that civilizations fall when the ruling elites cease to have any interest for the welfare of the little people who provide the goods and services who provide the basis for the existence of that civilization.
I keep getting drawn to the collapse of the Roman Empire as an analogy to our current mess, hoping that I’m wrong, of course, but perhaps mainly because it is the last time in history that what was once a single predominant world power lived spectacularly and unspectacularly died.
In 470 A.D., on paper, the Roman Empire was as strong as it had ever been. They had just beaten the horrible Huns and had shown their mastery of diplomacy by doing so with the help of their nemeses, the Goths. They had the legions, the arms, the culture, the institutions. But within five years, it all evaporated. They simply quit paying their bills. If you don’t pay soldiers and bureaucrats, they don’t stick around to take orders. They melted into the local cultures like butter in hot oatmeal.
It looks as though the same thing is being scheduled at some point during the next thirty years or so to happen to us.
It had become irrelevant to the ruling elites what happened because they had already cut their deals with a dying Empire. Emperor Diocletian (a favorite, by the way, of liberal historians) had over a century earlier already taken away the little people’s rights of free movement within the Empire, binding them to the lands of their fathers, in an attempt to keep them from fleeing the taxes. The wealthy, of course, had acquired special tax breaks. To get the tax collectors off their backs, the smaller landowners deeded their properties to the well-connected and well-heeled in return for the right to continue working the land. The well-connected became their “lords”. The commoners became serfs. The feudal system was born. It is the prototype for liberal governance.
The little people have almost continuously throughout history been the chattel of the elites. The last couple of hundred years may turn out to be simply a stray bubble in a long, inexorable stream.
> Once the parasite becomes more valued than the host the end is in sight.
Ticks don’t usually panic until the host is actually dead. Panic is not in their DNA; bloodsucking is. Besides, they stand a reasonable chance of being first in line when the New Order takes over. Look at Putin.
@ 58 “…I find this blog to be the most consistently exciting forum on the net.”
I enthusiastically concur with Overtherainbo. I know the analogy is imperfect but for me daily reading of the Belmont Club is like auditing classes at the School of Athens. I am intoxicated by the experience, knowledge, civility and commitment to Western values displayed by BC posters BC is one reason for my optimism.
“it’s not like centralized planning is failing because of economics, it’s failing because of politics and human nature.”
But that’s just another way of saying it’s doomed to failure. And, by implication, the larger the system the more disruptive will be its inevitable failure at the hands of human nature.
I have to say, Josh, that I don’t find that your identification of corporate magnates and bankers as villains to resonate much with me. Where I think you err is in impugning their motives and assuming sociopathy where, to me, there is simply inevitable human failing. Sure, there are criminals in big business just like everywhere else, but I think that, if you could exhaustively and honestly interview the members of these behemoths, top to bottom, what you would probably find is mostly good old fashioned rationalization and denial.
Making a financial killing is usually rationalized as good business, without careful thinking about the responsibilities associated with such success, and the people within such enterprises farther down the line are usually further constrained by a fear that violating the prevailing mores or blowing the whistle would be suicidal.
So, what I think you really have is mostly business folk at the top who are saying, “Wow, this really seems to be working out for us,” exactly what the rest of us said as we bought and sold property that we knew was being artificially inflated beyond its value, and many of us doing quite well as a result, thank you very much. And then you have the desk clerks who are, as an example, selling whatever or pushing whatever papers so that they can keep their job and paycheck and, in the case of the housing bubble, taking in bad loans because, among other things, Fannie said they had everyone’s back.
At any rate, the end point of your argument seems perilously close to that of the OWS folks, not to mention Lenin and Stalin: “the rich (and we could even throw in Jews right here) are stealing your future.”
Which means exactly what, even if it were true? More systems and regulations that are doomed to failure and which ultimately carry the risk of developing into a tyranny or, at best, causing us to speed down the hill faster and faster, whereas a much earlier fall would have been much less damaging.
I think we, all of us, need to reassess what’s valuable and what’s not. We know, for example, that there’s no reason to think that the rich are happier than the poor. So why the big deal about who has how much stuff anyway?
By all means, make all criminals pay an appropriate price, but let’s discard our prevailing utopian notions about just how close to Heaven we’re going to be able to make this place.
maineman, I’m making two points, first responding to the too-common Republican mantra that anyone rich is a “job creator” and must therefore be praiseworthy and perfect, and second asserting that the same behavioral trends we see in OWS and attribute to a deterioration in culture, are also VERY evident today in the executive suite – and do far more damage there than in a tent in front of city hall. Yes they are failures in human nature, but the problem is keeping everyone, even rich executives, responsible for their actions. If anything, with political or economic power (or with being bitten by radioactive spider) comes greater responsibility.
Reformed Trombonist @ 62 said:
“Emperor Diocletian (a favorite, by the way, of liberal historians) had over a century earlier already taken away the little people’s rights of free movement within the Empire, binding them to the lands of their fathers, in an attempt to keep them from fleeing the taxes. The wealthy, of course, had acquired special tax breaks. To get the tax collectors off their backs, the smaller landowners deeded their properties to the well-connected and well-heeled in return for the right to continue working the land. The well-connected became their “lords”. The commoners became serfs. The feudal system was born.”
This is interesting and I was previously unaware of it. I knew that Diocletian had done radical reorganization of the Roman Empire to maintain it, e.g. he founded the tetrarchy. Also there was major monetary reform under Diocletian, e.g. coins struck during Diocletian’s reign had a distinctly different look and that coinage style was retained by several subsequent emperors. Also there are a fair number of archeological remains from Diocletian in the city of Split, Croatia. He must have been a brilliant leader. I need to educate myself more about him.
Reformed Trombonist also said:
“The little people have almost continuously throughout history been the chattel of the elites. The last couple of hundred years may turn out to be simply a stray bubble in a long, inexorable stream.”
The last two hundred years were a total anomaly in terms of human history. This was due to the acceptance of the scientific method, the follow-on industrial revolution and the discovery of 300 million years worth of concentrated solar energy in the form of anthracite coal and petroleum. The last three generations in the developed world have been living inside a detonation wave that was completely unlike steady-state civilization. Our children’s generation will experience the passing of this detonation wave and watch the world revert back to the steady state that Diocletian was comfortable with. We were incredibly lucky to be alive during this period in history. Also I suspect a thousand future generations will pour curses upon our heads for our failure to better use the opportunities that were presented to us, e.g. we burned up most of our fossil hydrocarbons in automobile engines and failed to expand into outer space during the period of time that we had the economic resources to do so. I guess we could have done worse, e.g. we did not nuke ourselves into a radioactive cinder or hand the world over to the Communists. There’s still an opportunity to destroy ourselves if the Islamic thing spirals out of control….
#58 – “So John Jacob Astor, industrialist B. Guggenheim, Macy’s owner Isidor Straus, transportation magnate G. Dunton, railroad executives John Thayer and Charles Hays, etc. etc. with their valets and servants survived, where immigrant families from Ireland and Britain perished.”
You’re kidding, right? You’ve got to be. EVERYONE knows that ALL those men died on board the Titanic. It was “women and children first” among decent society at that time, and those men died rather than betray that maxim. Quite the contrary to your class-warfare imaginings, the HIGHEST percentage of casualties on the Titanic (if we’re going to sort people by sex and class) were amond First Class MEN. Read Mark Steyn’s review of the stupid Titanic movie for a quick glimpse: http://www.steynonline.com/3914/titanic
The Telegraph has an interesting article on the “wearies” a new statistical category in Britain describing “Working, Entrepreneurial and Active Retirees” — people working into their seventies because they can’t afford to live on their pensions or savings.
Haven’t there always been such people in modern Britain? If East Enders is any accurate measure, such people have lived under the socialist radar there for decades. Is that our future?
There are periods of quiescence, or latency in any growth process. That’s what we are probably seeing here. That would be a necessity if the old, dysfunctional systems are to be replaced by something more advanced.
There can be no doubt that we are moving forward, albeit snaking our way back and forth in the process, because that has been the overall trajectory of mankind, against all apparent odds. But to identify what is taking us forward and not, what is actually going on in larger terms, it is necessary to understand what forward means, what better is.
There’s no point lamenting the failure to do this or that without first clarifying why these things would have made us better. Why go into space, are the restaurants better there? Why bring back jobs from overseas, will we do something better with our time and money than we did the last time around?
I think the problem is with what we have come to consider good and bad, right and wrong. As an example, Josh, the OWS bums are overtly thwarting the rule of law and, consciously or not, engaged in a project of destruction – of tradition, mores, wealth, families, happiness, faith, hope, and charity, of all that is human, in fact. There can be no similarity, qualitatively, between that and someone whose pursuit of wealth and financial or industrial success has had an adverse collateral impact on their fellow man, assuming what they did was not in gross violation of the law.
We are in the process of finding out what it means to be a better people, to make the world a better place. Right now, we seem to have no clue, and we look to be headed for a good dose of suffering accordingly. The one thing that will clearly not happen is for us to find a way back to the relative wealth and security that we have recently enjoyed, whether it be by building better systems, monitoring our money or behavior more closely, finding new sources of energy, unless we also find our way to a “higher” level of awareness than the “go for the gusto” mantra of the last 50 years.
This is what the history of reality as we know it tells us. It’s not really all that much about the material. If it were, there would be no such things as better and worse, higher and lower, right and wrong.
#58:
Hello Strange Person Rainbow Guy. As Dr. Mabuse has explained, you have the Leo di Caprio version of “Titanic” confused with what actually happened. In many respects we could use men of the caliber of the “elite” from those days; men who felt an obligation to society in general, and in a very sincere way. Their sons went off to war voluntarily and with a sense of obligation.
Put down the Howard Zinn and read from reliable sources.
#66 Eggplant
> [Diocletian] must have been a brilliant leader.
By all accounts, he was a brilliant administrator. But he was no friend to freedom. By Diocletian’s time, Roman citizens had for centuries enjoyed the right to move about freely throughout the Empire. He had decided to restore Rome’s glory through public works, but needed to raise a lot of money to make that happen. He raised taxes egregiously on the farmers, but then the law of unintended consequences asserted itself as many farmers fled to the provinces to avoid the tax bill. (I guess starting over in some provincial hell-hole was preferable to running afoul of the tax collectors.) Diocletian could have admitted his mistake and restore things to the status quo ante, or double down and outlaw farmers moving away. Anyone with a working knowledge of the elitist mindset knows how that one played out.
Stoi @ 34. I agree with you – there was an September/October Surprise.
How could anyone explain the behavior of Bernanke/Paulsen leading up to TARP?
In may of 2008 those two told Congress that the Sub-Prime problem was a 100 billion max problem. By June, Paulsen is privately telling his Goldman Sachs chums in Moscow that we are in deep doo doo and then in September he and Bernacke effectively do the equivalent of “yelling fire in a theatre” bit before Congress with no warning.
48. rod from Australia
1) Fairly Cheap oil which makes shipping goods across the world economical
2) The US Navy keeping the worlds shipping lanes safe from cargo vessels
3) Chinese Currency policy / manipulation.
I see this mindless blather all the time at the ‘Oil Drum.’
Oceanic shipping is BY FAR the lowest cost per ton-mile… even railroads can’t compete with it… it’s not even close.
And long-haul truckers can’t compete with railroads… it’s not even close.
And short haul truckers can’t compete per ton-mile with long-haul truckers…
it’s not even close. ( Local trucks are usually either entirely empty or lightly loaded — duh. )
So your first assertion doesn’t pass the smell test… even though it is posted relentlessly by Peak Oilers.
Your second assertion must contain a typo. But in any event oceanic commerce will transpire even without USN hyper-dominance. It survived the 19th Century, didn’t it?
Your third assertion is shaky, very shaky. Red China would still utterly dominate off-patent manufactures even if she traded rationally.
That the amoral CCP is totally screwing up is manifest. Look at the wealth destruction they’ve caused: just start with their goof-ball high-speed rail project/ boondoggle.
When your whole enterprise becomes addicted to theft the dynamics of protectionism grab hold. Just as Canadian dairymen need State Rents to pay down their tariff buy-ins — Red Chinese plantation operators ( true ownership is forbidden in Central Planning culture ) have crippled R&D arms.
Hence they take on the dynamics of the forced labor racket a la Schindler’s List: there’s no money for the troops — it has to go to the criminals-in-charge.
—–
Rising energy prices — as in OPEC’s cartel — merely mean the end of said cartel.
KSA has held the upper hand for two generations. That swing leverage is about to evaporate as quickly as it did for the Texas Railroad Commission. Think overnight. You either have control — or you don’t.
I suspect that Libya is about to rev up oil exports quite a bit. Think a clean double.
——-
American mass export of lead free gasoline to Europe may end up being a permanent characteristic of the energy market.
Since the smaller nations simply can’t scale to the flow rates required when processing heavy, sour crude; refineries all over Europe may shutter.
Petroplus is leading the way to petrominus.
And then Yanbu is tossing another 400,000 refined bbl per day onto the ( European ) market…
This enterprise will most likely scale up from here — since it’s just another way for Europe to escape the Straits of Hormuz.
Thusly, we see the downside the Russian and Iranian price manipulations: their long term customers fee the noose.
We are posting glories to the most religiously intolerant despot prior to Adolf Hitler? ( Diocletian )
The man who ‘Nixonized’ the Roman economy with price controls?
The Emperor who held Constantine under quasi-house arrest?
Folks, let’s knock it off.
He was a disaster — no ifs ands or buts.
Reformed Trombonist @ 71,
The Wikipedia article about Diocletian is interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diocletian
Diocletian was apparently very innovative in trying to come up with solutions to keep the Roman Empire going. Unfortunately almost everything he tried failed. It appears that the Empire was too rotten to save. Diocletian did not like the Christians, persecuted them and got a bad reputation as a consequence. He was one of the few emperors to actually retire and hand off the Empire to a successor (apparently he had health issues near the end of his life). His huge palace in Split, Croatia was apparently built with his retirement in mind. He even had a mausoleum built for himself within the palace structure. Supposedly, Diocletian spent his retirement as a gardener raising cabbages. Apparently he had problems with depression and may have suicided. After he died, pissed off Christians vandalized his mausoleum, broke up his tomb and threw it into the nearby sea. History does not record what happened to his body, presumably it was fed to the local dogs (typical fate for Byzantine emperors). The mausoleum itself still stands. I’ll have to make a point of touring Split, Croatia.
#74 blert
> We are posting glories to the most religiously intolerant despot prior to Adolf Hitler? ( Diocletian )
I’ll let Eggplant speak for himself, but I would have no idea how anything I wrote could possibly be construed as approval of Diocletian’s governance.
#75 Eggplant
> It appears that the Empire was too rotten to save.
My own modest knowledge of Roman history would be stretched to speculate on whether that’s true. I have read, however, that there was definitely a perceived decline from Rome’s glory days by the time of Diocletian. No doubt some of their problems were the result of the succession, er, “process”, if that’s the right word to describe various Roman legions, loyal to a general, fighting for their favorite “candidate.”
But I can’t say whether the decline (by Diocletian’s time) was perception or reality. It does seem apparent in our own time that liberals can find a lot of decline in a healthy situation (all the better to hope and change you with), and a lot of health in a declining situation (all the better to get you to sit still and take your dose of socialism), depending on which situation is the better pretext for increasing their power. Maybe the Roman Empire had their equivalent to the Grey Lady, and Diocletian’s problem was that he listened to anything they said.
Reformed Trombonist @ 76 said:
“I’ll let Eggplant speak for himself, but I would have no idea how anything I wrote could possibly be construed as approval of Diocletian’s governance.”
I have to break the 4 comment rule to respond so I’ll keep it brief. Diocletian is interesting (train wrecks are also interesting). Being interesting does not mean that Diocletian was a nice guy. Diocletian’s history raises the question of whether the Roman Empire could be saved. My guess is that Diocletian gave it the best shot possible and failed.
in re: Diocletian
Working from memory and not digging out the reference works, Diocletian was attempting top down solutions of the symptoms of the problems of the Empire. Price controls, restrictions on movements, etc. attacked the symptoms and not the problems themselves. He tried to create a caste system, whereby children had to follow their father’s trade. And that included the shrinking middle class that was in charge of running the cities in the provinces. The reason was that they were fleeing. Why? Much of the cost of running the cities was expected to come out of their own pocket, collected taxes being earmarked for Rome.
When the supposed benefits of a civilization no longer are considered to be worth the burden of keeping it going, people start looking for Galt’s Gulch. If I remember correctly, when the end of the Empire came, most cities in the provinces threw open their gates and welcomed the “barbarians”. For most of those barbarians had royal courts [both the royal family version and the judicial version], their taxes were less onerous than Rome’s, and they were better at controlling brigands. Gaps in the governance by the new rulers were quickly made up for by the Catholic church at the diocese level. It was not perfect by a long shot; but at the time it was an acceptable alternative to rule from Rome. As has been said before, when the elites no longer see the mass of people as anything but something to be exploited; pretty soon the system collapses around them.
That said, anyone care to speculate how much the current bipartisan Political Class cares for us?
Subotai Bahadur