Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
Man-oh-man, is the world is the world pessimistic or what? Is there no one out there who sees anything in our future but anarchy, starvation, ruination, the end of America, the collapse of the West, and the ultimate nuclear annihilation of every living being save the cockroaches? Paul B. Farrell is hot on the heels of Conrad Black in this week's "Top Grumpy Old Guy" contest:
Here’s the timeline:
Stage 1: The Dems just put the nail in their coffin by confirming they are wimps, refusing to force the GOP to filibuster the Bush tax cuts for America’s richest.
Stage 2: The GOP takes over the House, expanding its war to destroy Obama with its new policy of “complete gridlock,” even “shutting down government.”
Stage 3: Obama goes lame-duck.
Stage 4: The GOP wins back the White House and Senate in 2012. Health care returns to insurers. Free market financial deregulation returns.
Stage 5: Under the new president, Wall Street’s insatiable greed triggers the catastrophic third meltdown of the 21st century Shiller predicted, with defaults on dollar-denominated debt.
Stage 6: The Second American Revolution explodes into a brutal full-scale class war rebelling against the out-of-touch, out-of-control greedy conspiracy-of-the-rich now running America.
Stage 7: Domestic class warfare is compounded by Pentagon’s prediction that by 2020 “an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies would emerge” worldwide and “warfare is defining human life.”
Color me perky, but me, sometimes I allow myself to hope that if we just get to Stage 4, we'll still have a decent shot at survival.
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Jul '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
Deja vu. The last time I was here I was very pessimistic. My first national election was 1980. The country had just been through an incompetent president who made himself proudly and publicly hostage to the Iranian hostage taking, allowing his and our enemies to define his presidency. Economic policy had been vapid-to-damaging since 1963, guns and butter, price controls, "Whip Inflation Now", Mr. Malaise, and declinism was the mass media's mantra.
And there was an election and some tough economic medicine and then historic growth for decades. My country chose a different path.
I cannot summon up pessimism this time. The lies are now transparent. The Tea Parties are arguably the strongest reform movement this country has ever seen.
Stages 5, 6, and 7 might happen without change to the composition of Republican leadership, but that leadership will soon reflect a new and more realistic political calculus.
Aug '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
Does that mean that the next President will have to confront even tougher challenges than the heretofore unprecedented difficulties faced by the present incumbent?
Sep '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
Um, when a guy calls them "tea baggers" in the opening paragraph, I know I'm about to read something unhinged.
May '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
kcarlin: I cannot summon up pessimism this time. The lies are now transparent. The Tea Parties are arguably the strongest reform movement this country has ever seen.
Stages 5, 6, and 7 might happen without change to the composition of Republican leadership, but that leadership will soon reflect a new and more realistic political calculus. · Oct 2 at 1:44am
Sorry to join the pessimists here, but I don't think even the Tea Party is enough (yet).
Also, I seriously doubt things will change enough in the Republican leadership. When a spacecraft sets course and is 2 degrees off, the longer it goes along that track without a correction, the farther off course it gets and the harder it will be to get back on course. We had a correction in the 1980s but not nearly a big enough one. Social Security was still on an insolvent path. Government debt still didn't get reigned in.
Now we are in a hole so deep that it will take MAJOR austerity and economic pain over a long period of time to safely get us back on track. Politicians' time frames are too short, and the public is too fickle.
May '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
Because of our debt (which keeps getting worse for many structural reasons, such as the retirement of the Baby Boomer generation, and the fact that we import more than 70% of our oil, and there is zero possibility that drilling domestically will do more than put a dent in that), this time around it's not like the 1980s.
Yes, it's deflation for the near term as a lot of bad debt gets purged out of the system, reducing the overall money supply, but the long-term "obligations" will cause the government to continue printing money long after it should stop. In fact, the two could combine-- as the dollar declines, it could suffer a sudden major loss of confidence worldwide, which would cause a default at the federal level as no one will buy the government's treasuries anymore.
Tell me how I'm wrong.
Edited on Oct 2, 2010 at 6:30amJul '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
I'm thinking somewhere between stages 3 and 4, a desperate Obama, determined to complete his "transformation" of America, provokes some sort of crisis that justifies imposition of martial law and cancellation of the 2012 elections.
What happens next is anyone's guess.
May '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
Pessimists are rarely disappointed, but optimists have a better time whilst we are here.
For those in the West, and increasingly in Asia, we are eating better than most renaissance Princes, living longer, have more freedom and choice than ever before in human history.
Check out a book whose title will lighten the mood somewhat
http://www.amazon.com/Improving-State-World-Healthier-Comfortable/dp/1930865988
May '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
kcarlin:
Stages 5, 6, and 7 might happen without change to the composition of Republican leadership, but that leadership will soon reflect a new and more realistic political calculus. · Oct 2 at 1:44am
agreed...Cantor...Pence...McCotter...Daniels...Pawlenty...Ryan...McCarthy...
There is good solid reason to believe the "Stupid Party" is getting it's act together and taking it on the road. While we see no singular "Reagan" on the horizon, perhaps his ideological children will do the trick...
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
Kenneth: I'm thinking somewhere between stages 3 and 4, a desperate Obama, determined to complete his "transformation" of America, provokes some sort of crisis that justifies imposition of martial law and cancellation of the 2012 elections.
What happens next is anyone's guess. · Oct 2 at 6:55am
No, no, that's paranoia. That's this kind of paranoia. That way lies madness.
Jul '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
What I find disturbing is that this guy most likely beleives everything he's written. All seven stages.
.
And Claire, I will go by the Mort Sahl rule; "Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get me!"
OR...
As Shoeless Joe advised Archie Graham in Field of Dreams, "Then look for low and outside, but watch out for in your ear!"
Edited on Oct 2, 2010 at 9:19amJul '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
Well then, it seems pretty simple. The prophets of doom should start emphasizing that while "cutting taxes and mindless deregulation won't work," cutting spending and mindful deregulation may.
Do the people have the gumption to demand general belt-tightening? Even if there was support for it would short-sighted pols do anything beyond the symbolic?
Probably not, but if the gloom & doom types don't pitch it, they're academic.
Either way, even if stages 1-5 went down as predicted, stage 6 would just be more phony statist promises of guarantees & fixes, along with a few witch hunts.
May '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
I have no clue what will happen in the US, but we are in far better shape than any other country to weather storms. I don't think that the current TEA Party, while a wonderful development to pull the center a bit rightward, is going to usher in the brave old/new world of Coolidge government, however devoutly that is to be desired. But go back to 1950 and think of the Russian nukes, the Berlin Airlift, the Korean War, Truman's promotion of socialized medicine, Truman taking over the steel industry, etc. etc. We survived and backed away from the precipice (with RINO Eisenhower in the WH).
And as an antidote to eternal pessimism, we offer Dr. Ridley:
http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=7076
May '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
Sorry, but this time it's different because of the huge debt we have, plus the structural problems and off-the-books debt in the form of future "obligations". Tell me how we are going to overcome that, realistically, in this political climate.
May '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
Palaeologus: Do the people have the gumption to demand general belt-tightening? Even if there was support for it would short-sighted pols do anything beyond the symbolic?
Probably not, but if the gloom & doom types don't pitch it, they're academic.
I've got the gumption. I'd be in favor of massive belt-tightening, but I doubt enough people and short-sighted pols, as you put it, would be able to back it long enough to follow through.
Who's to say if, in 2012, the independents don't swing back towards the Democrats and keep Obama in power? In 2008 things looked pretty bleak for Republicans-- and now look at the situation. But the swing voters who make this happen don't have enough gumption to follow one course for very long especially if it hurts in the short run.
Jul '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
Chris Deleon
I've got the gumption. I'd be in favor of massive belt-tightening, but I doubt enough people and short-sighted pols, as you put it, would be able to back it long enough to follow through. Oct 2 at 1:03pm
I agree with everything you wrote. So, what to do? Break up approps bills into bite sized pieces so funding troops isn't tied to ethanol subsidies? Cap discretionary spending? Raise the retirement age for Social Security & Medicare substantially for people under, say, 45? Pitch a constitutional amendment for a line item veto?
All have major flaws ranging from procedural hurdles in the Senate to implausibility of passage. I think what matters is that conservatives stop yelling about taxes and start yelling about spending, and only spending. Focus like a laser on that. Let the opposition offer tax hikes as the alternative, don't let them take aim at tax cuts.
Of course, no one can count on the swingers. They'll probably vote for the President again. Let's make him run offering a different agenda.
Besides, there's always the chance we'll get lucky. Clinton did with the internet, after all.
Jul '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
We speak of RWR – as we should. But there is another model – perhaps even more useful given the current unprecedented power grab of the Ruling Class.
As you said to Peter Robinson in your National Review interview, [The Conservative Party] need[s] “to be taking policy stands that will be extremely unpopular. She was the only one with the perceptiveness to see this and the guts to say it. In office she not only carried it through, but in a way that unmistakably transformed Britain – and is still transforming Britain. Even now, even with the Labour consensus, they haven’t reversed any of her significant policies. No one is talking about nationalizing British industries (and this is an interesting contrast to the US where people have been talking about it and have been doing it).
Where is our Margaret Thatcher? Chris Christie comes closest, but word is his health (and weight) would preclude a grueling race. Any ideas?
May '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
You're right, Chris. Everybody into the kitchen so we can seal up the windows and turn on the gas.
Every single financial issue you name is a prospective, projected problem; future promises, not current cash. SS, Medicare, ObamaCare, debt service, you name it. All of them can be mitigated by slicing a moderate chunk off the top; all of the problems as projected assume that the past trend continues into the future.
As we know, the issue is political will. If the body politic behaves like the Greeks and does not accept that there are problems, the issues will solve themselves via debt renunciation and/or inflation. If we grow up, there are better solutions.
The answer is not to sit here and moan that all is hopeless. At some point medical technology will intervene and resolve the health care cost problem. States will renounce payments on ridiculous pensions and there will be compromises made to prevent total abdication of responsibility.
The degree of problem has just begun to be recognized; at some point, they will begin to be addressed. We may not like all of the necessary steps- but we are not talking 1946 Germany either.
Aug '10
Re: Hell-in-a-Handbasket Watch
Most liberals genuinely believe that the recent economic meltdown was caused solely by deregulation, and has nothing to do with recklessly encouraging mortgage lending to people who can't afford them. While a respectable case can be made that the regulation of one or two narrowly defined business practices, having to do with derivitaves, might have staved off the crash, it's simply not true that what happened requires, or even justifies, that we regulate absolutely everything. And this means that in reality, repealing all those extra pointless and excessive regulations imposed by Obama will not cause another crash. I know this will come as a disappointment to Farrell, but the nation will hum along quite nicely without Obama running things.