"My Sun the Neoindustrialist"

Though my politics are about the same as those of little Miss Sunshine, especially when it comes to piling on "every New Democrat and any old Republican" in the delightful quest for policy scapegoats and economic voodoo dolls, her whistling about "the time for [a] neo-industrial America" as she skips past the graveyard seems a little superficial. Missy does not much want to look at the darker possibilities, in particular to consider that maybe it’s all as simple as "Ladies and gentlemen, our turn is over. Henry Luce has had his century (most of one, anyway), and now the Lesser Breeds Without will finally be getting some too."

One can imagine Missy at Madrid around A. D. 1650, pestering grandees and Crown ministers with projects for a "neo-agricultural Spain" to replace the "postagricultural Spain" that was not working out well.

Imagination is not to be blindly trusted, however. Whatever "went wrong" in that parallel-looking case, dogmatic adherence to Absolute Free Trade cannot have been involved. Actually, the more stody and academic idolators of AFT among us like to claim -- or used to -- that their own stuff dances on the grave of an antediluvian foolishness called ‘monetarism’. I got the impression that, had that Peruna been as good as it was touted, we would all be living in the late Reaganite morning or early Obamatan afternoon of _los siglos de oro y plata_, or call it "the Habsburg Millenium." Though if we had to be living around here where we actually do live, Habsburg Exceptionalism would perhaps not be our preferred ideology. ¿Who wants to go to the trouble of discovering How The World Really Works™ -- only to find that there can be no question of it working especially well for the likes of US?

Missy is most interesting when she condescends to gossip and anecdotal evidemce, notably

Thirty years ago, when defenders of American manufacturing first suggested that the nation commit to a “domestic content” standard in the goods we bought, they were howled down by nearly every economist and editorial writer in the land. (A friend counted 98 newspapers that editorialized against it, and none that wrote in favor.)

As early as 1621 / 1981, then, little Miss Sunshine had already started working on her portrayal of Princess Cassandra of Troy, fearing _monetaristas_ / Absolute Freetraders even *before* they had altogether stopped bearing gifts. _¡Qué providencia!_: SHE, at least, has seen all along that there is something awfully fishy about that absurd ‘horse’ of theirs. [1]

Her Royal Highness looked AFT in the mouth then, and, d.b.a. "Little Miss Sunashine," she is still looking it in the mouth now. I do not want to complain too loudly of the never having moved on to the rest of the horse’s anatomy. Yet there it is -- though HRH is to be warmly [1] commended for disbelieving in Freedumb of Trade, and thus making a pariah of herself even in the eyes of the disreputable fishwrap community, her heresy has never been radical, it never goes beyond first suspecting, then knowing, that AFT has -- somehow -- become a dumb idea for US. At no point does she seem to have cared what anybody-else-in-particular’s idea of it may have been or ought to be. Still less, what The Philosopher [2] makes of it, considered globally and historically and eternally.

The result of not looking beyond the oral cavity is that this scribble insinuates, whether thus original-intented or not, that to acknowledge "mistakes were made," plus or minus two aspirins and a glass of wine, ought to suffice to restore US to true economic sunshine _pronto_. Missy is not visibly worried that her "neo-industrial America" might be no more likely to arrive than a troupe of unicorns. Missy does not say "The hour is late, but if we all pull together, we can drag that nag Manufacturing back into our national barn where she belongs." [3] Missy takes for granted that if there were a Will to neoindustrialate, then to discover the Way would be no big deal.

(( This sort of thing is how she got the cutesy nickname. ))

Happy days.


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[1] VERY warmly! I write merrily, but bear in mind that coming out audibly for icky Protectionism used to be like endorsing the Black Death. The consensus that Missy dared to think independently of would have made Juggernaut envious.

[2] My thanks to Mr. David Hume of Edinburgh.

[3] Mr. Hume’s buddy Kant of Koenigsberg would rule, perhaps, that Missy neglects to ask the ‘critical’ question: _¿Wie soll "eine nachindustrielle Amerika" überhaupt möglich sein?_ -- "Hey, guys, before we start hunting snarks, are we *perfectly* sure they have not gone extinct over the last thirty years when nobody was looking?"