"a fairytale from the past"

Q. "Can [militant extremist Republicans] actually stand up a say that these people believe in a [Keynesian] fairytale from the past?"

Amendment I to the Fedguv Constitution permits the neocomradely community to utter whatever tripe and baloney strikes their fancy. (And I don't mind either.)

Would this particular tripe be well received? That is the real question, presumably, though it may be a slightly silly one to ask. Are Televisionland and the electorate seriously expected to make an informed judgment as to which mammonologists are telling "fairy tales" and which are purveyin’ the Infallible Truth product?

So it will not do for the neocomrades to simply "stand up a[nd] say" that Chicagonomics is right and everythin’ older or invented elsewhere or otherwise divergent is _eo ipso_ rubbish, they will have to call upon the Agitprop Arm to make sure the patients take their medicine correctly. "Life is unfair": the patients will probably know that Judas Iscariot and Benedict Arnold are fiends to be booed and hissed, but respond with a __________ to the mention of Mr. Keynes.

But Life is not 100% unfair, for the neocomrades’ plight here is to some extent their own fault. They failed to make sure that all their wombscholars and downdumbees knew who Keynes was and that his name is to be instantly hissed. It is natural to conjecture that the neocomrade spinsters were quite sure that that taxsuckin’ vampire was dead with a stake through the heart and would never be heard from again. "What went wrong?"

Well, no, we can discuss the Crawford Crash as a thing-in-itself some other time. At the moment our concern is with the Big Management Party’s agitprop and indoctrination efforts in the sphere of economics, efforts which appear in the rear-view mirror to have been slightly miscalculated. The upshot is that the neocomrades must now tell tales themselves -- tales entirely free of fairies and other supernatural exuberances, doubtless, yet nevertheless tales. Before their dupes and marks can boo and hiss the Beast of Bloomsbury, they will have to be told who Mr. Keynes was. No way around it. (Is there?)

Now many of us with experience of the pricier brands of tertiary education tend to become preoccupied in such a case with whether the Tales of Hoffman (or, more to the immediate point, those of Neocomradess A. Shlaes about the FDR Depression) are wie es eigentlich gewesen or not. That must be what Neocontender #7 meant by draggin’ in his fairies, after all. It is quite clear, though, even if it is not frequently said out loud in public, that the truth or otherwise of tales told in Homelandic politics is of very subordinate importance. Televisionland and the electorate are rarely in a position to judge the veracity of tales, and thanks to peccatum originale and all that jazz, Televisionland and the electorate don’t really much care about the veracity angle unless it becomes the subject of a tale-about-the-tale, a ‘metatale’ that is a different story. (And speakin’ of peccatum originale, she who will not tell a few fibs for her Party and her Ideology cannot be very devoted to them: so easy to do it, so churlish and self-regardin’ to refuse!)

In general, then, neither the mob nor the mob’s pols care too much about accuracy in narrative-mongering. Though a product came from Rabbi Ben Trovato rather than from the goddess Veritas (whose name invariably appears on the package), it will probably pass muster in the Naked Public Square™ well enough. More exactly, Tale T will thrive or perish by strict Darwinianity, it being understood that adaptation to _wie es eigentlich gewesen_ confers little or no reproductive advantage.

That generality, being general, applies to decent political grown-ups as well as to neocomrades and other militant extremists; it even applies to your occasional miscellaneous tertium quid like M. de Perot. Accordingly I shall not waste any breath impugning the accuracy of neocomradely and GOP narrations. What I want to question is rather the Big Management Party’s deployment of those narrations best labeled ‘tales’, namely those that might begin "Once upon a time, long long ago." "A week is a long time in politics," of course, but one ought to allow a sort of Extended Now with ten years or so both backwards and forwards. (Certain neocomrades are much enamoured of the Tom Clancy sort of scenario set in a tendentiously alleged future, which I suppose counts as a ‘tale’ too, and which becomes tale-like well short of the ten-year mark. We can work out the details of that brain disease some other time; for the moment, a ‘tale’ must be retrospective.)

So, the, what is to be questioned or impugned about the Party of Big Management’s deployment of tales -- tales true or false, with or without pixies -- is whether it is consistent with the broader self-presentation of the PBM gentry. Emblazoned on the banner of militant extremism (as it appears from outside the monkey house) are two famous soundbites: (1) Their Ford's "History is bunk!" and (2) the anonymous (?) "That was THEN, this is NOW!" Does it befit spinsters who spin for a Cause that so presents itself to tell their wombscholars and their downdumbees and their projected marks and dupes any tales whatsoever about Mr. Keynes, who has now been dead over five times that proposed hedge around the Extended Now? What, by neocomradely lights, can it possibly matter who Keynes was? Has the Beast of Bloomsbury not been swallowed up in his own notorious "long run"?

Furthermore, one must bear in mind their far-famed Destructive Creationism© product. To impugn and question on the basis thereof does not involve strict logical contradiction of the sort that arises with the above maxims of Their Ford and their Neocomrade A. N. O’Nymous, but as a practical matter, encouragin’ their wombscholars (&c.) to worry about what has long since been creatively destroyed would be a strange and self-defeatin’ sort of pædagogy, would it not? Should not the kiddies be indoctrinated ever to look forwards rather than back? (Or possibly to look sideways for additional targets of neocreativity?)

Finally comes a question or impugnment of much less importance, but one that has been bothering the present keyboard ever since the onset of the Crawford Crash. Though I proposed a ten-year Extended Now in general, who am I to propose? Did not the neocomrades’ own Boy draw a line through history at 11 September 2001, with everythin’ subsequent to be the Brave New Now™, as it were, and everythin’ earlier abandoned to the dustbin or bunk repository of Shabby Obsolete Then? To be sure, George XLIII Bush could be accounted a trivial tale-worthy matter of Then himself, especially by a really thorough-goin’ Destructive Creationite. And the whole pack does seem to agree that Master Dubya is only the bunk of yesteryear whenever Comrade POTUS happens to allude to him or any of his residual destructivities.

But I digress: the daily botheration is my inability to reconcile the neocomradely celebration of the Big Bang, 11 September 2001, all that bang-based Kiddie Krusadin’ and Long Warrin’ and jihád careerism of theirs, with the economy-centered universe that everybody, even the neocomrades, has been living in since last September.

Reading through the peanut gallery at Pajamas Media about the CPAC circus, I found that some of the weaker siblin’s at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh still prefer to be at ‘war’ with M. bin Ládin and Dr. Zawáhirí rather than Dr. Tobin and Mr. Keynes. There can be no doubt at all that it is these trailer-trash peanuts who are out of step with The Conservative Movement™; their predestinate PBM betters are quite certain that Psocialism in One Country is a far clearer and more present danger than Islamophalangitarianism ever was. (It was perfectly predictable that the GOP geniuses would take that Party line, though naturally one had to possess an accurate theory of elephant anatomy to get one's predictions perfect.)

Still, one sympathizes a little with the peanuts’ inability to pivot on an ideological dime.

Similarly, but at much loftier level, one thinks of poor ol’ Neocomrade F. Fukuyama, who must, by this point, be goin’ mad tryin’ to decide whether Ms. Clio is dead, or alive, or somewhere in between like Schrödinger's cat.

Happy days.