The Reflective Child (continued)

"This time we’re in trouble entirely thanks to the dysfunctional nature of our own financial system. Everyone understands this — everyone, it seems, except the financiers themselves."

Oh, dear. There’s the Krugmanite professional deformation again, the tin ear for politics.

The professor knows better than he usually scribbles. If he is required to think about things in advance a little before op-edding it, he can exhibit a genuine awareness that ninety-odd percent of Americas Otherparty (and at least three-quarters of nonpartisan Foxcuckooland) understand nothin’ of the above sort whatsoever. Not the slightest scintilla or inklin’ thereof crosses their minds, except maybe as a target to be shot at.

The kiddies’ own account of what happened durin’ the lead-up to the Crawford Crash of September 2008 involves no "dysfunctional nature of their own financial system," no slightest inadequacy of the System championed ad nauseam by AEIdeologues and Heritagitarians and Catoholics and Hoovervillains. "Free Enterprise" did not dysfunction, perish the vile, unorthodox thought [1].

No, sir! Miss Freebie didn’t spontaneously combust, she was murdered!

You don’t have to be Perry Mason to figure out whodunnit: it was the Three Weird Sisters, of course, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Barnie Frank. They were tryin’ so hard to be nice to the Bad Poor, they was, that they wrecked a System that properly appertains only to the ever-immortal Middle Class(®). [2]

"Everybody knows" that tale of woe. Everybody without a Ph.D. in economics, anyway. Everybody who can park a bicycle straight.

Healthy days.


_____
[1] It is very doubtful that F.E. CAN dysfunction in the authentic fan’s-eye view, though some folks may not much relish the functionin’ at times. "Whatever is, is right!" sang the Bard of Selfservatism even before 1735.

Since about 1865, there has been a sort of North American prose gloss to Mr. Pope’s universal bumper sticker explainin’ WHY the latest whatever must be accounted right: namely because it is only another consequence of Our True Freedom, that Yank freedom which, notoriously, THEY all hate us for. ("Put Bin Ladin in his place: abolish the death tax today!")


[2] Such is the esoteric (or agitation-propaganda) account provided by Party ’n’ Ideology.

As to what is really goin’ on, well, back in 2000, Citizen Krugman was rather good on pointing out where the effective "middle class" of the militant extremist G.O.P. is located. Sandwiched in between the ninety-fifth and the hundredth percentile of the income and wealth distribution of our beloved Investment Society (Pat. Pend.). Way, way up there, almost outta sight.

As to what the wingnutettes and wingnuts really think in private, I’d guess they have chanted their True Economic Freedom mantras so often as to make it pointless to require whether they "really believe" in them. They are stuck with that product line collectively no matter what the private judgments of individuals may be.

On one minor point, though, I think they would reject my paraphrase.: followin’ their Neocomrade Dr. R. Limbaugh, they would mostly, I betcha, reject the bleedin’-heart idea that Fannie and Freddie and Barney actually give a hoot what becomes of the Bad Poor: it was all just a Saul Alinsky or Cook County power grab, don’t you know?