Remember the way the real estate bubble and subsequent financial crash went down? There were clear warning signs — unprecedented growth in housing prices, rampant speculation in some housing markets, mortgage-backed securities that were rated AAA yet were clearly vulnerable to increases in foreclosure rates, too many homeowners using home equity loans as piggy banks — but in the short term there was no reason not to laissez les bons temps rouler. The bankers were making a fortune selling mortgage-backed crap, flipping houses was profitable, and the maestro Alan Greenspan was giving the whole enterprise his seal of approval. And when it all went Pete Tong, you blame it on the strapping young bucks buying mcmansions with their CRA dollars.
The same thing is happening with the market for wingnuttery. There are clear warning signs — a demographic time bomb that will destroy xenophobes politically, widespread public support for Medicare and Social Security, a new generation of voters that voted Democrat two-to-one in 2008. In the meantime, though, suicidal budgetary fantasies are applauded by the entire Village, snubbing Latinos earns cheers from the base, and everyone’s getting rich peddling snake oil on Fox, on the radio, at think tanks, and with book sales. The serious people at the Pulitzer prize committee have now given it all their seal of approval. Why rock the boat? There’s simply no short-term incentive for anyone on the right to do anything other than spew the craziest right-wing nonsense they can think of.
When the bubble bursts, they can blame it on strapping young bucks speaking Spanish. The bankers got bail-outs and bonuses; elite wingers will get think tank gigs.
Make no mistake, the bubble will eventually burst.
Alan in SF
The Pulitzer Prize going to Rago was like a suicide note for the newspaper industry.
Elizabelle
Agreed. And maybe some of these old coots will live to feel foolish in their own time.
But think of the opportunity lost: a president who was poised to make some changes 30 years overdue.
This would not have been so awful if you had a middling president and middling time.
We got peak wingnut when we needed more room for an FDR or Lincoln calibre president and “can do” spirit.
Martin
Yeah, that’s how it’s looked to me since 2008. Sarah Palin was the moment I realized just how big a that house of cards was.
Elizabelle
Alan: please use that language in a letter to the Pulitzer Board.
They presided over a knife in the heart to their own profession.
CT Voter
Best news I’ve heard all
daydecade….Jennifer
Make no mistake, the bubble will eventually burst.
Like an angry, festering boil.
Joe Beese
And then, with historic Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress and a Democrat in the White House, things will start improving for America.
mclaren
This is an excellent post, DougJ. Bravo!
One of the surest signs of a bubble is the widespread conviction that the bubblicious commodity is “safe” and “can’t fail.” That’s certainly the conventional wisdom in Washington today — all the pundits are dead-certain that when wack jobs like Ryan gibber their drivel, they’re being “serious” and so it’s “safe” and “sensible” to praise this insane twaddle.
To build on what Alan said, the output of the pundits inside the Beltway since the 1980s constitutes the world’s longest suicide note.
MobiusKlein
What ever happened to “Peak Wingnut is a LIE!” ?
Carl Nyberg
When you own the media, you can manufacture your own reality.
Wingnuttery is not the enemy. The oligarchs of the corporate authoritarianism movement are the enemy. They own the media.
Right now the oligarchs have created a situation where they win when the Democrats win and they win more when the Republicans win.
So, even when the house of cards that is wingnuttery collapses, corporate authoritarianism is largely safe. The Democrats won’t take any drastic steps. And the oligarchs will quickly rebrand the GOP in the media. Then the Democrats will explain that they have to meet the GOP halfway.
piratedan
@Joe Beese: actually they did Joe. Sorry you missed it.
kdaug
I hate it when you’re right, but at least they don’t have the launch codes.
It’s going to be spectacular, in the ugliest sense of the word. And I don’t think we can wait it out – the demo timer is running faster than their expiration dates.
But, as always, given the choice between “insipid, ineffective insider” and “end of the world absolutist”, I’ll take option A every time.
Interesting times, indeed.
EconWatcher
It’s hard to put a date on it, but wingnuttery became unsustainable at the time when the winguts started dismissing all facts and information that did not come from their own Fox News/Rush/O’Reilly media.
I saw this transition in my own dad. He’s always been a winger, but he used to pay some attention to facts, and you could talk to him. And when Fox News first became popular, he enjoyed it immensely, but he was in on the joke; he knew it was wildly slanted, and he thought it was fun–a guilty pleasure.
But at some point (maybe around 2005?) he and a lot of people like him started (pretending? believing? not sure) that this was reality. He started making claims that Fox was no more slanted to the right than the NYT was to the left. And since then, there’s just no talking to him.
eemom
Splendiforous post. I sure hope you’re right.
As for the Pulitzer thing though, meh. Prizes are stupid in general, and those fuckwads gave one not only to Kathleen Parker but also Maureen Dowd, so it’s always had jack shit to do with anything, imo.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@MobiusKlein: Peak Wingnut IS a lie.
The Wingularity is Near.
The wingnut griftopia bubble will not burst until after the 2012 election.
You can make book on that, you and DougJ both.
In the run up to the 2012 election all three legs of the conservative stool will fall to the Wingularity; socons, neocons, and fiscalcons (libertrians and bankstahs).
Mandramas
@Carl Nyberg: Media can be defeated, with a political inspired government. It is hard, but it is posible.
Joe Beese
@piratedan:
I guess the voters who delivered the 2010 “shellacking” – your man’s word for it – missed it too.
But I’m sure they’ll come around. They can only be distracted by 20% real unemployment for so long.
Snarki, child of Loki
My first reaction is to say “Shhh! Don’t warn them!”
But, with wingnuts, they will automatically believe the opposite of what you say, so carry on.
OH MY! CONSERVATISM IS FAILING FROM BEING TOO SANE AND SOBER! LET US PREPARE THE LIBERAL MASTER PLAN FOR THE NEXT CENTURY, COMRADES!
Skippy-san
The issue is not if their ideas will be repudiated-but when. People who write that the momentum is shifting back to the reasonable man are deluding themselves I think. There is a whole generation now who actually believe the nonsense that is spewed by idiots like Cavuto et al. The only way they will change their minds is if they are hurt by it-physically, financially or emotionally or some combination thereof. That is going to take some time to play out I am afraid. And the list of victims of this foolishness will be HUGE.
As William Hurt said in Big Chill, ” Its a cold world out there and tomorrow we all go back into it.”
Egypt Steve
I dunno. I guess it was either P.T. Barnum or H.L. Mencken or Donald Trump or Newt Gingrich who said that “no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”
Maybe that will be finally proved false. I’m not betting my whiskey-and-harlot money.
mclaren
@Carl Nyberg:
I wouldn’t be too sure about that.
Market capitalism is currently getting driven into the sea on all fronts by free open-source peer production. From credit unions to bike-sharing setups, from torrent downloads online to restaurants with a “pay whatever you feel the meal is worth” policies, free or as nearly free as makes no difference is opening up a can of whupass on market based capitalism.
Methinks the corporation’s days are numbered. We’re seeing a level of overreach in Michigan that tells us corporatism has reached its outermost limits. When corporations dissolve entire cities and appoint privatized goons to loot the place dry, people will simply vote with their feet: they’ll get the hell out. And the backlash will destroy corporatism once and for all.
Medieval barons believed that feudalism could never end: but it did. Likewise, giant corporations today cannot imagine an alternative to market capitalism…but we’re seeing it in the form of grameen banks and wikipedia and linux and youtube and bittorent.
When self-contained rapid replicators (repraps) start gearing up en masse, working in real materials like carbon nanofibers stronger than steel and lighter than styrofoam, you’re going to such radical changes in the economy that market capitalism will simply fall by the wayside. The workers will take over the means of production, all right, but not as Marx envisioned: they’ll do it by printing out their own cups and saucers and forks and knives and bicycles and chairs in their own living rooms.
Repraps can now print transistors. A prof at MIT has designed a reprap that can print entire buildings.
Now that the global economy has slammed head-first into the brick wall of Peak Oil and the limits of global growth, we’re looking at a zero-growth totally sustainable economy. No one’s ever seen that before. It will mean that profit becomes irrelevant compared to sustainability. That’s not a conventional market economy: it has nothing to do with a conventional market economy. If profit becomes isngificant compared to recycling because if you don’t recycle, you die, then the corporation with its mission to increase the amount of profits it generates for shareholders also goes the way of the archaeopteryx and the dodo.
Corporations will wither away in favor of wikis and crowdsourcing just as globalism will melt away like morning dew before the skyrocketing cost of oil. These trends are inevitable: it’s only a matter of time.
david mizner
Well, maybe, but so what?
The central lie of TeaBagNation — that the country’s broke, that we must reduce the budget yesterday — has gone mainstream, accept by all the respectable people, including the President.
It’s pretty sad. Since Clinton, Democrats think they win because they steal right-wing ideas, put a smiley face on them, and use them to win elections. Meanwhile the country goes to hell.
Wiesman
The analogy is compelling, but ultimately empty. There’s no reason to think that a financial bubble will work the same as the “Wingnut bubble”. It’s just wishful thinking.
Don’t get me wrong; I hope you are right. But I’d hate for any on our side to grow complacent thinking that the “Wingnut bubble collapse” is inevitable and there is nothing to worry about.
These nutters and their ideas have to be fought, continually and mercilessly.
wasabi gasp
You know who else liked bursting bubbles? Hey-oh!
Linda Featheringill
I kind of suspect that the wingnuts will just become irrevelant like libertarians as it becomes apparent that they have nothing to contribute to solving actual problems.
Or maybe I just hope that will happen.
Still, there is no “there” there, IMO.
piratedan
@Joe Beese: yeah, your guys got elected by the jobs mandate. so far so good eh? Lets keep up hopes that your team will keep preaching the songs of hate against the poor, the elderly, minorities and women. But hey, you got most of the media and most of the cash, so there is that and its really unlikely that the folks here in the ole USA will go all Battleship Potemkin on your ass although it may be what you and yours deserve.
stuckinred
@eemom: Thanks for having my back.
redactor
To paraphrase Joe Kennedy, when Donald Trump is going birther it’s time to sell.
matoken_chan
Youz allz iz rancid cudlips coz it wuz all Assange and de hacker nation! Eumemes! Eemoms! Ketosis! Bwahahahahah.
Comrade DougJ
@eemom:
You know, if they had to give it someone from that world, they could have done a lot worse than Parker. She can be glib and shallow, but she’s not dumb, she writes well, and she figured Palin out faster than anyone else on the right.
Mark D
I’m sorry, but at this point, I’m thinking this all like believing in the Y2K disaster, or that Dec. 2012 is when the world will end, or that Atlantis existed, or that the pyramids were built on plans dating from 10,500 BC.
It’s just crazy talk. It just won’t happen.
The Village simply has too much invested in ensuring it never happens, and most Americans no longer give a shit — most of ’em have spent more time voting for some washed-up celebrity on some dance show than they’ve spent voting in real elections. And that’s just in the past month.
Hell, we’re talking (or typing, in this case) about a citizenry that just gave the House over to people who screamed about government debt and deficits, despite the fact the party those people belong to are the ones RESPONSIBLE FOR ALL THOSE DEFICITS AND DEBT!!
Don’t get me wrong, here. I would LLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVE to see us reach Peak Wingnut, as the Wingularity will be beautiful — like witnessing a meteor shower of stupid raining down into an ocean of assholery, all with sparks of douchebaggery smoldering on the surface.
I just don’t think it’s gonna happen. Not without something major (and, sadly, maybe even violent) happening first.
New Yorker
This might be a Pauline Kael moment for me, but I’m been rather sure of this since grad school, when I didn’t know a single Republican in my cohort.
Did I mention that this was business school?
What I worry about, 16 years and 1 day removed from the Oklahoma City bombing, is that as the wingnuts circle the drain, they’ll get more radical and more apt to spasms of violence. I’d rather not have another smoking hole in the ground where a daycare center once stood.
mclaren
@Linda Featheringill:
More like Whigs or the Know-Nothing party. These were once major political movements in the United States. Now, most people have never even heard of them.
In another 40 years, no one will even remember who Rush Limbaugh or Karl Rove was — just as, today, almost no one even knows who Huey Long or Father Coughlin was.
Woodrowfan
@redactor:
That was Bernard Baruch, but you’re right..
Davis X. Machina
There are worse things than being hurt. People will, given the right incentives, volunteer to be hurt.
Rather than live under the Keynan usurper and his gay-Sharia reign of terror, if necessary, everything must be sacrificed — children, health, retirement…
Martyrdom is glorious.
Forget political hostage-taking. We’re seeing the rise of political suicide bombers.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren: God help me, I hate to do this, but mclaren is making a good point. It may take a while but it is happening and it is pretty much inevitable at this point.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@matoken_chan:
actually, social media and dataflow are a huge part of the eventual collapse of the wingnut grifter bubble.
All the Arab Spring revolutions were started via social media, American atrocities in A-stan and Pak get spread by social media and create more islamic terrorists.
Conservative ideology cannot maintain its information bubble anymore, so the market for conservative shaped data will collapse.
;)
Omnes Omnibus
@Egypt Steve: never bet your whiskey and harlot money. Food and rent money is for gambling. Priorities, man, priorities.
The Moar You Know
@mclaren: Agreed. An environment in which there is no room – and no ability – for growth renders both our current understanding and practice of “economics” totally and completely irrelevant.
Changes are coming that most of us, frankly, will not be able to cope with. In this respect, the Third Worlders have a huge edge on us; they are used to recycling everything and living with what they need and no more.
The old, conservative, First World market model is already no longer viable; that is what is driving the seemingly insane antics of the TeaTards. They know the world is coming unglued. The liberals are just as bad; they think with some tweaking that everything can be made to work and we can continue with business as usual.
That is not the case, as you so nicely lay out.
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: And these will be the next to collapse. However, there is a model to deal with information flow outside of governmental control – samzidat.
Cris (without an H)
@Joe Beese: [slaps self first for even trying to talk sense with Joe Beese] You know, DougJ’s point isn’t that Democrats will make it better, it’s that Republicans ceasing to be insane will make things better for America.
Bob Loblaw
@Omnes Omnibus:
Really, the anarcho-syndicalist is making sense to you?
Shoemaker-Levy 9
Can you give us some idea what this might look like?
Comrade DougJ
@Wiesman:
I never buy into the “we can’t be complacent” stuff. I’m all for getting involved, I volunteer, I give money, I do everything I can. But I’m under no illusion that it makes a ton of a difference, that I’m hastening the demise of wingnuttery as a political force.
Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, monkeys and typewriters and all that.
eemom
@stuckinred:
you are very welcome.
driftglass
“Peak Stoopid” from November, 2005.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2005/11/peak-stoopid.html
So I’ve got that going for me.
Comrade DougJ
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
Probably in this case, losing three or four straight presidential races, combined with a few woeful showings in Congress. It could be something more spectacular though, like a single 1964-style beatdown of Bachmann or Trump or whoever.
Zifnab
When Republicans took over the South, they used racism. And through racism they used a lot of gerrymandering and voter intimidation.
Then you had Bush v. Gore where counting ballots became unimportant and we just let the State’s Governor pick the winner. Voting irregularities in states like Ohio and Wisconsin are common place. Republicans pull 7000 votes off a personal laptop to decide a statewide judicial race, and no one in power bats an eye.
You’ve got computer programmers confessing to vote rigging
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1thcO_olHas&feature=youtu.be
You’ve got Governors developing increasingly more onerous requirements for voter registration. Voter Fraud is becoming the clarion call of the Republican Party. Arizona and Louisiana are cooking up Birther Bills to keep Obama off the ’12 ballot. The Governor of Detriot basically had a city seized, wholesale. No voting is going to get Benton Harbor’s government back on track, because the city government is now in the hands of an appointed official.
I think – demographically – the Democrats should be winning pretty handily given a few more election cycles. But systematically… ? The Republicans are cheating every way they know how. Political popularity is no longer enough, when you’ve got politicians who can simply cheat their way to electoral success.
Joe Beese
@Cris (without an H):
Are you sure that’s his point?
Surely he believes that Republican rule means the end of all that is good and true. So wouldn’t that make anything that increases their plausibility as candidates a bad thing?
Comrade DougJ
@New Yorker:
They will get more radical, for sure. They will also get older, though, which means they may not do much about it, except buy gold and write angry letters to the editor. The violence may not get that bad.
quaint irene
Unfortunately, it took the Bubonic Plague to help bring down that system.
Felonious Wench
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Absolutely.
Wanted to tell you…your writing is much clearer now, and your persona is much easier to handle also. I no longer scroll through your posts. I know you’ve been working on it…good job.
Mandramas
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Saalam aleiki, sister. This is you talking to your sockpuppet or someone has hijacking your previous naming convention? ;)
Comrade DougJ
@Joe Beese:
Yes, that’s my only point. I don’t know what Democrats will do about it. I suspect that they will stay fairly corporatist.
matoken_chan
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
You iz madder than I iz. Mad props, cudlip!
Fang
I would note one more thing – we all need to be making people aware of the things the wingnuts and the crazy policies are doing – and not just online. Writing your local papers. Getting involved locally.
Hell, imagine what’d happen if people began handing out flyers or putting them out to point out wingnut problems, corrupt politicians, etc. Place them everywhere, print them out business-card size and leave piles at stores or put them up on bulletin boards, etc. Crowdsource the anti-wingnuttery.
Mandramas
@quaint irene: It took also absolute monarchy, early mercantilism and Martin Luther.
eemom
@Comrade DougJ:
I disagree. I can’t stand her.
But they gave one to Eugene Robinson too, so there’s that.
I really, really think prizes are stupid, though.
“Best fascist dictator: Adolph Hitler.” — Woody Allen
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Zifnab:
I’ve been saying this for a while now. The demographic ‘time bomb’ isn’t gonna matter as long as Republicans can and will, legally or illegally, disenfranchise and cheat their way into victories, and then use those victories to further enshrine their moral superiority over not only their opponents, but the silly fucking proles that dared vote against them last time.
eemom
@matoken_chan:
I lol’ed at that — and I’m in a doctor’s waiting room.
someguy
What does Trollbait E.D.K. think about this peak wingnut / Twilight of the Yobs theory? He’s sort of on the inside of the wingnuttery, albeit he’s in that special wing of the asylum with Frum and Excitable Andy, the wing reserved for wingnuts who specialize in bitching about other wingnuts…
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob Loblaw: In this brief comment, yes. The combination of technologies like 3-D printers and techniques like crowd sourcing is going to have a significant effect on our economy.
Bob Loblaw
@Comrade DougJ:
Shouldn’t you be required to justify your claim that reactionary sentiment can be peaceably evolved out of a society by finding at least one example in the thousands of years on this planet where it’s actually, you know, happened? Because normally it takes a pretty epic dislocation. And those aren’t much fun.
Besides, if we know that humanity at large is going to be getting much older, much faster, is it really wise to proclaim that this demographic change will coincide with the dawning of a new age of enlightenment?
It seems to me that for the West (and China), reactionary sentiments aren’t going to be so much overcome but simply stymied by materialist fear. But that doesn’t necessarily swing the balance to progressivism.
Comrade DougJ
@eemom:
One of my favorite lines from the Woodman. I agree about prizes.
Phoebe
@New Yorker: @Comrade DougJ:
They aren’t aging that fast. I think New Yorker’s right; there’s going to be more violence from the angrier, dwindling, something-percent within the 27%, and the only silver lining is, it’s death throes. And death throes can be pretty violent.
Comrade DougJ
@Bob Loblaw:
Where did I say this will be peaceable?
Sentient Puddle
@Joe Beese:
You’re talking about people with whom “death panels” carries weight. They miss a lot of things.
Martin
@Shoemaker-Levy 9: My expectation is just chaos within the party for an election cycle and then a reassertion of what the GOP core principles are. Mostly a softening on taxation, abortion, immigration, etc. I don’t expect a radically different GOP, just one where moderates are again allowed. Of course that would come entirely at the expense of the tea party, so it’ll be catastrophic in electoral terms until the GOP can find some other demographic to court into their ranks. Someone will get kicked out of the boat forever, but I can’t even fathom to guess who that will be. My guess is the anti-taxers, but that’s just a guess.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Mandramas: lawl, not even close to me. i dont do sockpuppets.
@someguy: the leading edge of the Wingularity has already compromised EDK’s home blog.
The LoOG is mainstreaming islamophobia.
I doubt he will comment on DougJ’s wingnut bubble….he has some fires to put out first….and damage control on Kuznicki snarking on Cole too.
;)
Comrade DougJ
@someguy:
EDK has become a flaming liberal.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@david mizner:
I know a good idea! Why don’t progressive activists, particularly paid ones, go out and educate the general public on the positive benefits of more progressive political and social policies? That way, there would be a groundswell of support for those policies, and Democratic elected officials would adopt them as something that the electorate wants.
Doing that would sure in shit beat what progressive activists have been doing the past few years: which is sitting around and blogging amongst fellow progressives about how progressive they are, patting themselves on the back and whining about sellouts.
In short, David, you’re a miserable c**t, and need to shut the fuck up about anything forever.
Mike from Philly
As long as there are brown people to hate, there will be wingnuts to hate them and corporate media whores to exploit the whole sordid mess. Welcome to America folks.
fhtagn
It is really lovely to hear people assuming that the Republicans are doomed, but they said much the same thing after Goldwater got thrashed, and look what came down the pike with its blood funnel and a hokie line in demagoguing anyone who wasn’t white, Southern and male. Yes, you do remember.
.
Then there’s the fact that social media have done nothing to clean out the Augean stables of wingnuttery, because the wingnuts have just shut off any sources of info/data that contradict what they want to believe.
.
Don’t discount the GOP finding a way to sneak away from their more extreme positions, especially on Hispanics, and actually winning back some of the brown people they’ve alienated with racism. There’s plenty of evidence that Hispanics are fairly conservative socially, and there’s no iron law that say that they have to vote for a lackluster Democratic party by default.
.
Finally, if the Democrats don’t stop being so miserably gutless and waiting for the GOP to shoot itself in the foot, it’s entirely possible that the outcome will be a reduced and less enthusiastic Democratic base at the same time as the older wingnuts finally shuffle off to meet whatever abomination created them. That ain’t gonna win you any permanent majorities.
.
In sum if Democrats wait for demographics to save them and don’t actually fight for clear, strong positions with punchy, aggressive messaging, they’ll probably screw up any chance that they have of winning the future. It’s not so long ago that we all thought the GOP had been wrecked by Bush – and now we have Boehner weeping all the way to the gavel, Obama’s popularity crumbling, a huge loss of House seats, and every chance of losing the Senate. You want to keep rinsing and repeating that particular chain of events, just sit back and wait for demographics and social media to do the work for you.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Comrade DougJ:
lawl.
liar liar pants on fire.
You cannot be a liberal and a freemarketeer at the same time.
It is ideologically impossible.
EDK has become a FAKE liberal, you mean.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike from Philly: I wouldn’t say that human history supports your contention for American Exceptionalism on this.
fhtagn
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Horseshit. You can’t be a liberal and believe in rigged markets and cartels, which is the reality of the so-called free market in the modern USA. The true free market is a very different beast, and one we are unlikely to see in the economy in our lifetimes.
Joe Beese
@Yevgraf (fka Michael):
Like they adopted the public option and ending the war in Afghanistan.
Snark FAIL
Chet
@Comrade DougJ: I don’t know that Parker “figured Palin out faster than anyone else on the right” so much as that she was one of the only ones forthright enough (or Villager-snobbish enough, or both) to actually come right out and say what she thought of Palin, and Palin’s supporters.
I guess that would still make her slightly less horrible than her counterparts, though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: John Stuart Mill called to say you were wrong.
Bob Loblaw
@Yevgraf (fka Michael):
Why don’t people who comment on the unfortunate nature of cancer go out and cure the damn thing already?! What are you waiting for?
…Which part of the progressive tradition involves calling people miserable cunts, by the way?
@Comrade DougJ:
This would seem a rather arch view of things to come for such a radical political realignment.
Nylund
It seems very easy to become a famous conservative. Even one jackass stunt will do it (see O’Keefe, and Koran burning guy). They’ve learned how to rig book sales numbers to make them all “bestselling authors with their bulk purchases and book club giveaway schemes, but don’t even need to do that. Any ol’ sloppy book exclaiming that liberals are the real Nazis will do (see J. Goldberg) will be devoured by the 27% crazification crowd. For the numerically inclined, it seems that anyone willing to hide their lies in math has a job waiting for them at Cato or Heritage. The more stupid things you say, the more famous you seem to become (see Trump, Palin, Bachmann, etc.) Going on TV and spouting off about some crazy conspiracy, be it a one world currency, FEMA concentration camps, or birtherism seems to make you only more popular.
All in all, I gotta say, it sounds like a pretty swell gig for the soulless. Even as someone with a soul, I sometimes wonder if I’d be willing to go all Andy Kaufman on them and do it myself for a while – just long enough to pocket some wingnut welfare – before writing a book about the whole crazy adventure.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Omnes Omnibus: okfine Omnes. You were right about populism.
Please explain how a freemarketeer like EDK can be called a liberal in contemporary America.
He is a garden variety libertarian as far as I can tell. Socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Chet: noonan figured Palin out too and got caught saying it open mike.
Easier for the grrlstyle to see past the starbursts I guess.
;)
Omnes Omnibus
@Bob Loblaw:
The tradition of pamphleteers which stretches back, at least, the the invention of the printing press.
MattR
@Nylund: It’s not necessarily limited to wingnut welfare. I feel like I am singing m_c’s siren song, but the same thing applies in the business world. If I had no ethics (and was not quite so lazy), I could have a bunch more money.
david mizner
@Yevgraf (fka Michael):
That’s funny. You actually think it’s a lack of public support for progressive policies that stops Democratic pols from pushing them. I’m not sure what to say in the face of such cluenessness.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
@Comrade DougJ:
I would say the latter looks more like a bubble bursting than the former. Perhaps we need another metaphor.
Jay B.
Doing that would sure in shit beat what progressive activists have been doing the past few years: which is sitting around and blogging amongst fellow progressives about how progressive they are, patting themselves on the back and whining about sellouts.
So Internet postings that irk you = the entirety of the “progressive movement”. You do realize that people have lives beyond what they post, right? You do realize that your perceptions, pre-conceived as they are, don’t necessarily reflect reality, right?
You might even notice that “progressive” ideas get killed by nominal progressives themselves.
People are out there every day, people against torture, the death penalty, war, people in favor of social security, expansion of services, a more robust labor movement, there are informational efforts going on about every goddamn thing — right down to practical ways of influencing the Democratic Party.
But you read some people rightfully demoralized on the Internet and you completely absolve the people who have the best opportunity to educate.
And even then, what would it matter. Dick Durbin and Mark Warner have put Social Security on the table. The public is OVERWHELMINGLY in favor of protecting it. How is this grassroots progressivism’s fault? They are actively undermining it — Warner being DLC, but Durbin has usually been a decent sort.
There is massive unemployment and the Democrats are talking about the deficit. How do you “educate” an electorate that is smarter than the people making the votes?
Martin
@Nylund: Well, the left succumbs to some of the same things. Apparently you can get some serious support by stealing random classified information.
Sentient Puddle
@Jay B.:
What, precisely, is their proposal?
Alex S.
I believe that some part of Obama’s restraint when it comes to enacting reforms and using rhetoric is that the future is with him/us if he doesn’t fuck it up. If his presidency turns out to be decent ‘only’, it will be enough in the long run. The demographics, the scarcity of resources, the new multipolar world, everything points to the end of present-day conservatism. If he can defend the corner stones of the liberal vision of America, Medicare/aid, Social Security, Roe vs Wade, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and the like, he will have done the job history has given him. He entered his job shortly after the collapse of conservative economics, we are witnessing the end of conservative foreign policy (Libya should serve as a great example), social conservatism is approaching death. He ‘only’ needs to prevent conservatives from pulling America into the abyss with them.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@Joe Beese
I’m trying to remember where all the emo progressive activists were in providing cover on the whole health care thing as the teatards were crashing the town halls in 2009.
Oh, right, the emoproggers were all blogging about how they were being failed, and weren’t out in force to give the teatards some pause in their more outlandish displays.
Fuck you, too.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@david mizner:
You could start with an “I’m sorry, but me and the rest of the paid emo progressives are lazy fucking tools who really needed to get out and work with blue collar Michiganders to help educate them on the role of government in trying to stabilize their economic lives, and how they’d be even more broke and starving if they put their futures in the hands of conservatives”.
Asshole.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I agree the bubble will burst eventually. I just don’t agree that the consequences will necessarily be what you guys think they will be or that people will interpret the fallout the way you will. We are all a little guilty of group think sometimes, and that can blind us the way other people process the same bit of information. The future is a lot more of a crap shoot that anyone would like to believe. Interesting times.
Uloborus
@Joe Beese:
They didn’t miss it at all. That’s classic election patterning. We kicked legislative ass in 2009-2010, and the other side went into screaming, frothing ‘We must reverse this!’ mode and our side went into ‘Waaah, my pony is the wrong color!’ mode. They voted heavily, we voted lightly, even though hardly anyone changed sides.
Apparently this is absolutely standard. Counter-intuitive, but normal.
Jay B.
@Sentient Puddle:
I don’t know. The are working with other moral deviants across the isle to figure out the sweet spot for inflicting pain on enough people to let the GOP save face. “On the table” means it can be part of the negotiations. I’m going by what they say, which is “educating the public”, right?
Warner:
Sounds awesome!
Durbin, meanwhile, is talking about means testing, which is stupid too, while ringing alarm bells about Social Security “falling off a cliff” in 2037. Jesus Christ.
Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are the only ones making the right claims: No fucking way. Anything other than that muddies the water, assumes a problem where there is next to none and helps the party that wants to kill these programs. It’s not that fucking hard.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Very quickly and I don’t presume to speak for EDK or intend to suggest that I agree with his arguments on any particular idea, bear that in mind. As we would all agree, no platonic ideal of a free market has ever existed no can one exist. As a result, someone who speaks of a free market or market based solutions is either a fantasist or means something other than a Econ 101 free market. I interpret a market orientation to as an indication that, all things being equal, a person would prefer the market to solve problems. All things, however, are not equal and, as a result, the market cannot solve all problems. The question then becomes which problems should the market solve and how how much room should it be given to solve those problems. In my mind, for example, the market is great for shoes, but horrible for health care. Great for restaurants, awful for public services. Etc. I think that being a liberal means that one must prioritize solving the problem over letting the market work.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@fhtagn: O Great Cthulu, you honor us.
You are correct, the THEORETICAL Free Market is a well-defined construct that has not existed and probably cannot exist in any known society.
But freemarket policies, freemarket solutions, market-based policies, market-based applications are ALL the same thing—ALL applications of Freemarket THEORY made into practice, the only difference being the amount of regulation leveled on the market..
The opposite of market-based or freemarket solutions (same thing) which at best rely on the action (invisible hand) of the market to deliver social justice as a trickle-down or side-effect, are social justice solutions, which DO attempt to directly deliver social justice with safety nets, redistribution (in islam we call that zakhat, catholics call it tithing), childhood nutrion and pre-natal nutrition programs, etc.
When President Obama actually used the words “social compact” in his speech that was revelation. He gets it. He may pay lip service to the “free market” for the bubba consumption, but we are starting to get there.
Conventional libertarians like EDK actually think there is no alternative to blind market-worship of the freemarket god.
There are many alternatives, for example evolutionary economics.
fhtagn
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Is there an English translation, or are you just freebasing Economics for Dummies, Fundamental Bafflegab, and and Old Pappy’s Scrotum in the same crack-pipe?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Omnes Omnibus: see my response to fhtagn above.
What would a libertarian who was actually socially liberal AND fiscally liberal look like?
And what would fiscally liberal even mean in a marketbased capitalist society like America?
Sentient Puddle
@Jay B.:
Then you don’t really have any reason to be bemoaning defeat already, do you?
I mean Christ, we went through this last week. People were so convinced that Obama’s speech would be about adopting Bowles-Simpson, and thus we must gnash teeth, bitch, whine whine whine…and then he gave the speech and it turns out that the only way anyone could really complain about it is if they pulled a mclaren and translated it into something else entirely so that they could in fact whine about what they thought he said rather than what he actually did say.
And substantively, preemptive whining on this is still stupid. You know what one reform they could put on the table that would be painless? Eliminating the payroll tax cap. Unless you make a lot of money, that won’t hurt you at all.
redactor
@Comrade DougJ:
Timothy McVeigh was 26.
fhtagn
@redactor:
Damn, he was 27 about thirty seconds ago. Have you found the Fountain of Youth?
Omnes Omnibus
@redactor: Yes, he was 26; not 36, not 46.
Mandramas
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Do you know that it is easy? Liberal means Free marketers in English, except in the United States of America.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@fhtagn: sry, that is how I understand it from empirical observation. What do you object to?
I am just saying all market-based policies are derived from Freemarket Theory, which is a fantasy construct. In order to approximate the Fantasy Freemarket, conditions in the form of regulations are imposed on market-based policies.
Evolutionary Economics (im referring to the game-theoretic evo-bio part of EE) is different.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Sweden. The Netherlands. Denmark. Etc. Don’t come back with a comment that those countries are soshulist; they have (regulated) markets and they have strong social safety nets.
Bulworth
Not sure how this relates to peak wingnut, but Ann Coulter is back from the grave with another “best-seller”.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Mandramas: but what would fiscal liberalism be? Embrace of capitalism and freemarket theory?
Embrace of redistributism and civil welfare?
huh?
Isn’t liberalism basically the improvement of all aspects of the human condition?
How can capititalism do that? Capitalism improves the basis of the human condition for one individual over another, or for one tribe or nation over another.
MattR
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: And how is that completely independent of the free market? Evolutionary economics is basically just a different way of looking at how the free market works.
@fhtagn:
Yes it would. SATSQ.
fhtagn
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
I object to the fact that you string words together, without any apparent logical connection, you forget some fairly obvious facts, and you seem to have some sort of bizarre religious obsession. How any of this is supposed to tell us what we didn’t already know, I have no idea. As for the idea that Obama has just figured out the idea of the social compact – what the hell do you think he was doing in Chicago as a community fricking organizer? As for your bizarre ideas about fantasy constructs, for which you cite only your own fantasy-prone ideas, any theoretical construct is, to some extent, fantasy based. It’s a model, an exercise of the imagination, to be verified as far as possible. And no, we don’t regulate the market to make it approximate a free market fantasy. We regulate it to ensure that a free market fantasy doesn’t in fact take shape. The problem lies with regulatory capture and the way in which cartels evade anti-trust law without being called to account. Would it be too much to ask you to think before you gibber?
Cassidy
@piratedan: He didn’t get his pony in the 1st 30 days. Everything is FAIL! after that.
Are we complaining? I can’t tell. Personally, I think most of these fuck’s need to die off; the sooner the better. They can go visit their god or whatever, I don’t care, but get the fuck out of our way.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Omnes Omnibus: but America is not a soc1alist country. So we don’t have the social justice programs available to swedes. All we have is free market capitalism, and that only delivers say….jobs …. as a side effect or as trickle down.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@MattR: this
I dont think that freemarket capitalism necessarily improves the human condition.
You guys on the other side are asserting that it does.
MattR
@Hermione Granger-Weasley:
Neither do I. Next strawman please.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: You asked for examples and I gave them. You may want to read up on what soshulism actually is. It does not match what you see in any western European country. We do have a social safety net here; it is just incomplete, inadequate, and neglected.
Jay B.
@Sentient Puddle:
Defeat? I’m talking specifically about what they say. What the fuck are you supposed to comment on? It’s idiotic.
I’m not hypothesizing about what Obama was supposed to be talking about. I’m saying that Durbin and Warner aren’t helping anyone but Republicans by talking like that about Social Security.
I’ll never EVER get the “preemptive whining” thing. Durbin and Warner explicitly talked about modifying or cutting Social Security. I’m opposed to it! Most Democrats should be. Most Americans ARE. What am I supposed to say?
And sure, uncap the payroll tax. Sure! No problem. Now point to where Warner or Durbin said that.
It’s literally to the point here where people don’t think people should even comment on what politicians say. It’s laughable.
lol
@Martin:
Or killing some cops.
Mandramas
@fhtagn: @Hermione Granger-Weasley: Do you know, that you are saying exactly the same thing?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@fhtagn:
I said it was the first time i HEARD HIM use the term.
Economics is not my discipline. I am just stating what I observe, as a layperson. I am happy for you to add detail and correct my impressions.
I thought regulation was imposed on the market to approximate the theoretical freemarket.
And you say that is wrong?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@MattR:
then why advocate it? What is your reason for advocating market-based/freemarket policy?
fhtagn
@Mandramas:
It may seem so, to those who are not paying attention in class. Pop quiz Thursday.
khead
Sheriff Bart: A man drink like that and he don’t eat – he is going to die.
Jim: When?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Mandramas:
lol!
shukran jazeelyan my brother and my chevalier.
epiphany.
fhtagn explains all.
Lawnguylander
@Jay B.:
Peak firebagger is a lie.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@fhtagn: shukran jazeelyan to you too.
;)
Sentient Puddle
@Jay B.: OK, this really shouldn’t be that hard to grasp, so lemme go through this slowly…
To which I threw in the example of removing the payroll tax cap. That would be modifying Social Security, yet something very few people would really have any problem with. Something that if they proposed doing, is something that nobody here should whine about.
I never claimed that they did propose this, and really, the equivalence you’re trying to grasp for here doesn’t exist. Because…
…the whole purpose of me pointing that out is that what you are commenting on is that you’re just filling in blanks with things that might or might not be accurate. You hear “modify Social Security” and act like Warner and Durbin said slash benefits and raise the retirement age to 75. I’m pointing out that it could also mean, say, uncapping the payroll tax. Which is, y’know, good policy. Until we actually hear a proposal, we just don’t know which way it will swing.
You might find it laughable, but I, for one, am tired of hearing people make shit up in order to criticize.
tkogrumpy
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, god can’t help me, but I’ll second that emotion.
Zifnab
@Yevgraf (fka Michael):
They did. These progressive activists were called “Union Organizers” and they worked wonders for the Progressive Movement for decades.
Anoniminous
@mclaren:
The United States Elections Project is very useful. For example, Michigan had a 43% voter turn-out in 2010 compared to a 68% turn-out in ’08.
Until the average American gets off their fat, lazy, butt and votes things are going to continue down the corporate road.
Bob Loblaw
Oh look, Hermione_chan jacked another thread again to complain about E.D. Kain’s economics. How novel and refreshing.
Mandramas
@Anoniminous: America really needs compulsory voting. Or at least, Sunday as a voting day, and no voter registration.
Jay B.
@Sentient Puddle:
What am I making up?
Warner:
How hard would it be to say that health care care costs are the biggest problem with “entitlements” and that reforming them requires more than Republican faith in the profit margins of insurance companies?
Durbin:
This is direct from GOP propaganda. If the modification is simple, why the drama?
The process is mystified because the GOP says exactly what it wants and the Democrats are split. What’s the point of even talking about 2037? Why is Warner telling everyone there will be pain — but that to the Gang of Six, raising taxes is the one fucking thing “off the table”.
This is all to the earlier point — progressives have, forever “educated people” on some of these programs. They are not simply popular to progressives, they are overwhelmingly popular. They are millstones around the necks of the GOP and our party’s “leadership” can’t even talk about them correctly.
If they don’t really believe that Social Security is on the table, but health care is, why can’t they say it?
And then, of course, if we “keep our powder dry” and let things happen to the process, we end up with Dick Durbin questioning the long-term viability of Social Security if we DON’T DO SOMETHING THIS MINUTE. Which is, of course, the same bullshit Bush said four years ago on his privatization tour. Does Durbin want that? I doubt it. But it should be MUCH EASIER to make it clear what the issue is.
In the meantime, Democrats say pain is coming and the Republicans think there should be more. At a time when there is overwhelming support for tax increases for the wealthy and unemployment is still around 9 percent.
300baud
As much as I’d like to believe this, I’m not sure it’s true.
Bubbles happen when social proof substitutes for real proof in a way that creates a positive feedback loop. They pop when reality rudely intrudes.
DougJ could be right that the bubble is wingnuttery and the intruding reality is the American citizenry, and the popping event is the wingnuts crossing the mysterious boundaries of “all the people some of the time” and “some of the people all of the time”.
But it could also be that the bubble is America, 1980-present, and the intruding reality is some major problem with our financial and political systems. In that situation, the wingnuts are a symptom, rather than the entire bubble.
Mnemosyne
@Phoebe:
The guy who tried to shoot up the Holocaust Museum and killed one of the guards was 88 years old. So, yeah, probably not a good idea to count the oldsters out when it comes to random violence.
(Edited for better facts.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Weirdly, my grandmother, who is one of the least wingnutty people on the face of the planet was rather perversely proud that a guy who was her age could still be that much of a menace.
tkogrumpy
@Omnes Omnibus: Two or three more decades and you’ll understand, believe me.
Omnes Omnibus
@tkogrumpy: Oh, I get it; it just amuses me.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Bob Loblaw: no, I understand now. fhtagn explained it. I was confused about what freemarket actually meant.
EDK can’t be a liberal.
Bruce S
I love this analogy. So much that I’m running with it, probably to the detriment of rational analysis, but what the hell.
If Palin was the subprime mortgage of the Wingnut Bubble, Donald Trump is the credit default swap. His aura of “high finance” will give the appearance of bouyancy to an enormous crap-pile. The Pulitzer Prize committee, unfortunately, has chosen its role as Moody’s with their AAA rating on Rago’s raving. I think there are still a couple of good years for this thing to escalate – especially given that sober and serious David Brooks has chosen to continue to rationalize the most recent and obviously fraudulent of his side’s hucksters.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Bruce S:
yes, I agree.
We are at the knee of the exponential crazy curve and it is about to go slope:vertical.
The Wingularity will engulf all three legs of the conservative stool in the run up to the presidential election; socons, neocons, and fiscalcons (libertarians and bankstahs).
Brooks is just one of the first libertarians to succumb to the spread of the Wingularity.
Eventually they will all fall.
mclaren
@Shoemaker-Levy 9:
Brazil under Lula. Squelettes. The government building public cablecars over favelas. A guaranteed minimum income for the poor (it’s being tried right now in various countries in South America).
See Noam Chomsky’s 2007 article “South America: Toward an Alternative Future” for more details.
Villago Delenda Est
@quaint irene:
We are approaching another collapse on the same level as bubonic plague in medieval Europe.
It’s coming. The question is will the species survive this collapse.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Villago Delenda Est: the species will survive….. but maybe not the subspecies.
homo sapiens americanus idiotus
Dream On
@fhtagn: This.
PIGL
@Joe Beese: can I start holding my breath now? So I can turn even bluer?
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Dream On:
but as long as the country is 50% bubba what can we do?
I did my part in colorado at midterms….did that make a difference? Kay and others worked their butts off in their states and still lost.
We are stuck in Distributed Jesusland until the demographic timer goes off.
Mandramas
@Hermione Granger-Weasley: Democraphic clock is a trend, not a sure thing. The world only changes we work to change it. Bloggin’ is a nice way, but there are other ways. The problem is that all the leftist popular movements on America where disassembled in the last 30 years.
Mandramas
@mclaren: The cablecar over the slums on Medellin, Colombia, are a nice example, too. But also the redistribute laws on Argentina.
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Mandramas: In 2008 non-hispanic caucasian became a minority in american children 5 and under for the first time.
In 2009 the majority of american children under three were children of color.
tick….tick….tick…..
Hermione Granger-Weasley
@Mandramas: after white in the electorate goes below 65% the conservatives will never win again.
Right now white folk are at ~70%.
A third of whites consistantly vote liberal, including race traitors like me.
Fred
News flash, the bubble has already burst! It is what made the election of a black man with the name Barack Hussein Obama possible. The current wingnut Teabaggers + 2010 election were nothing but a dead cat bounce in the over all scheme of things. The next wave will give Dems a FDR size fillibuster proof super majority.
Fred
@Carl Nyberg: It’s not an Oligarchy, it’s a Plutocracy. Same same but different.
soylenth
Oh Dougj, you are going to look back in 5 years with fond memories for what a hilariously optimistic post this was. That is, if you have time for thinking at the Ronald Reagan Reeducation Center, the only 3 R’s you’ll ever need.
I keed, I keed. But seriously, this reminds me of that same line in America: The book. Or was this intentionally “this is as bad as it will ever be” fake optimism because you know it’s only going to get worse before it gets better?