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Making the Most of the ‘Biden Boom’
The last two years have not gone well. Devastating inflation (reducing the wealth of absolutely everybody, rich and especially poor), urban collapse, high interest rates, increasing racial tensions, a European war that threatens WWIII, increasing energy costs, huge drops in the stock market, China invading our airspace (& Taiwan’s airspace) with no consequences, a humanitarian crisis at our southern border, shipping problems, rising crime rates, explosions in suicides and drug overdoses, prominent leaders openly discussing secession, the FBI, CIA, and our military becoming prominent partisan actors in our political sphere, and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on…
Republicans are displeased, but this is not surprising. They didn’t vote for all this to begin with.
It’s the Democrats I wonder about. Paul Krugman won a Nobel Prize for Economics. He is not stupid. When he wrote the above article when Biden was elected, did Mr. Krugman believe it? Did he really believe that leftism would make America a better place, like it did Venezuela, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Cuba, etc? Regardless of whether he believed what he was writing then, what does he think now? Now that he has seen how this turned out, if he were given the chance, would he go back in time and vote for Trump instead of Biden? If not, why not? How many people voted for Biden? How many of them would vote the same way today? Why?
I’ve heard that there is a growing movement among Democrats who hope that Biden does not run for re-election. Why, I cannot imagine, since he has been the most productive Democrat president since at least FDR, and probably ever. He has gotten more Democrat policies enacted in just two years than any other Democrat president has in their entire term. But still, some Democrats apparently want someone new.
But despite that, and despite all that has happened, I really believe that a huge majority of Democrat voters would not change their vote in 2020, given the chance. Despite all that has happened.
I just don’t understand.
Conservatives have long said that no one could be a leftist unless they were unaware of the events of the 20th century, and unless they had never traveled to a leftist country like Cuba or Venezuela. But now here we are — all of us up to our necks in the results of leftism. And most leftists seem to stick with leftism.
There’s no way they believe that leftism works — the last two years prove that it does not, just as the 20th century did.
There’s no way they’re simply unaware of the results of applied leftism – they’re living it right now.
So why do they continue to support leftism? The only possible answer I can think of is so horrifying that I refuse to consider it.
Is this what they want for their children? Of course not. But they continue to vote for it?
I just don’t understand.
Published in General
I think it is all about feeling good about ones self. That is it. Vote left because they are the good guys. No matter what.
Is it similar to the willing self delusion Jordan Peterson speaks of in describing how the majority of Canadians still to this day seem to believe that the truckers strikes that occurred when Trudeau mandated vaccines for all truckers, was actually organized and funded by MAGA Republicans in the US rather than being the spontaneous organic protest it appeared to be? Preferable to believe that, than that their government was lying and out of control…. The pattern looks similar.
This is true at least with my democrat friends. I can’t really call them “lefties” because that isn’t how they live, but try and convince them the people they vote for are causing this crap they complain about….good luck. They don’t want to hear it.
Look at Chicago and Baltimore. They keep voting for the same people as their cities suck.
Because voting Republican is for evil people.
Financial Expert Paul Krugman tm
Listen, fat. The voters don’t regard it as “leftism.” It’s “sustainable, inclusive, compassionate policies” and it’s soooo much better than the Putin-tool who put kids in cages and told everyone to drink bleach. Leftism is, well, hairy people talking about Marx or something.
So the real enemy is the social media tycoons, the educational establishment, Hollywood, the news media, and everyone else who teaches the lemmings that leftism is virtuous?
Yeah, ok. I’m sympathetic to that perspective.
But first of all, it’s at least partially the fault of the lemmings.
And secondly, why do the social media tycoons et al continue to push leftism, even when they see how it turns out?
I just don’t understand.
The unexamined life is just how some folks roll.
We are not made in the image of a kind and loving G-d.
Some of it is that it turns out just fine for them personally. If you are wealthy enough, you can afford luxury beliefs and bask in the adulation of your ‘peers’.
See, Doc, your problem is you think these people actually pay any attention to stuff like we do. It is very frustrating, I know. Their eyes either glaze over or they start spouting some babble they heard on the late night talk shows. They can’t be bothered with facts. It gets in the way of them feeling better about themselves. You (and I) are just weirdos for staying abreast of what the bureaucrats and politicians are doing. Whose got time for that? There’s a new brewery down the road we need to check out! SQUIRREL!!!!
Democracy was a mistake.
What you don’t seem to understand is that you are in the process of being “democratized” out because you don’t drink the cool aid.
Well, don’t keep us waiting. When are you going to get to the bad news?
You shouldn’t have to wait long. Just watch the news…
i.e., equal misery is “better” than unequal prosperity.
As far as the cognitive dissonance among leftists goes, I remember two moments that demonstrated it quite well.
Those moments when the mask slips.
He must figure it’s better if they don’t earn the money in the first place, even if that means less to tax.
It seemed to me that in both cases they had never even thought about the issues they were asked about.
It’s not that leftism doesn’t work, it’s just that Biden hasn’t been the best person to implement it. Once we get a really sharp leftist as President, everything will be hunky-dory and happy days will be here again.
Or maybe by “boom” he really meant war(s)?
Doc, I like a lot of what you say here, but it’s tough to see a major error in the first words of the second sentence here. You wrote:
This is not correct. Inflation does not reduce the wealth of everybody.
Think about it. There are winners and losers from inflation. This should be obvious. As a result, it turns out that inflation will be popular with some people.
Then there’s this one.
Since Biden took office, the Dow is up and the S&P 500 is up. The Nasdaq composite is down. So stocks are mixed. There has not been a huge drop overall.
As is often the case, the markets have been up and down on occasion, so there have been periods of decline and periods of increase.
So maybe the reason that some people think that Biden hasn’t done such a bad job is that your view of the facts — or at least some of them — is incorrect.
People like George Soros, for example.
That is totally misunderstanding the idea of being made in His image.
Leftists seem to have the perfect collection of people to keep their lunacy going:
The one half survives off the government teat and the other half thrives off of it while feeling good about themselves. So they perpetuate their lunacy.
Seems like a terrible way to live to me. It has to collapse soon.
And the people who live that way, will be very unhappy when it does. Are we ready to deal with them?
If a person is invested in inflation-resistant funds, that’s likely to leave him as a winner. However, it’s not quite as simple as that, as QE had been goosing stock prices, and that needs to be rolled back.
The key to understand this is that conservatism is made into the ultimate boogeyman. It’s not that these Biden policies are good, it’s that they are clearly better than this idea of conservative policies. People have this idea of conservatives being entirely composed of Glen Eisenhardt or something worse, and they do not want that.
Demonization of conservatives is the most effective argument of the Left, just like how demonization of the Left is probably why we are here.
That’s why there is great concern amongst Mayor Petite’s supporters that recent events may have blunted the Wonderkind’s path to the White House. Not sure he could win Ohio.