The Age of Unreason, 9-10-2010 (Part 1)

 The pigeons come home to roost. During my lifetime, we have been led by our politicians from one overhyped crisis to another: Tonkin Gulf, The War on Crime, The War on Drugs, the war against welfare queens, crack babies, and, now, Obama's profligate spending. We now have an angry populace distrusting anything to do with reason or facts.

I spent the afternoon playing Scrabble with two other pretrial detainees. Both are white, middle-class men, a little younger than I am. Neither can see any good in the bailouts or stimulus. Unbeknownst to them, I have far greater worries about the government and the economy, but am taken less seriously because I do not listen to Limbaugh's platitudes and anger. See, I think the machinery has been terribly broken.

The Nation published Michael Eric Alterman's  "Kabuki Democracy" (August 30/September 6, 2010), and I agree with most of Alterman's criticisms. However, he does not question whether the government and the economy still function properly. If parts of the economy are seriously damaged, we cannot expect President Obama to say so. The same applies to the government itself. Which may explain his pussy-footing way.

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a reply to Alterman that I find myself more in agreement with:

Alterman acknowledges the problems only tentatively observing that "one mirght argue this [Democratic] faith in goivernment's ability to improve people's lives is misplaced." You betcha. The role of the left should not be to uphold or defend the government meaning for now, the corpo-Obama-Gerthner-Petraeus state, but to change it, drastically and from the ground up. That may sopund overly radical to Alterman, who seems to want "progressive who think of themselves as left of liberal" to abandon even that distinction. But as the Tea Partyers keep reminding us in their nasty and demented ways, these are revolutionary times.

I have in these notes described the Tea Partyers as constitutional and political idiots, reacting to an inchoate feeling that the government is not working as it should. What hampers the Tea Partyers is that their politicians got us into this mess. We who did not subscribe to conservative Republicans slogans do not have their mental hurdles to overcome. Unfortunately, the Tea Partyers's failing to acknowledge the bankruptcy of conservatism. Their being bamboozled only fortifies our Age of Unreason.

[Continued in The Age of Unreason, 9-10-2010 (Part 2). sch 3/23/23.]