DoublePlusBad—Liberal Group Think In An Age of Crisis

So, so many journalists and politicians still don’t get it! As I sit through hour after hour of moronic punditry and asinine interviews, where it is abundantly clear that neither, reporter, anchor, pundit nor politician has the remotest idea what they are talking about, I find myself feeling like one of those aliens in the 1950s movies who look at earthlings with pity, wondering can we really be this dumb?

Here are the top five myths trumpeted by the on air “talent” in our nation’s newsrooms:

Myth #1: The last eight years prove that free market capitalism doesn’t work. Baloney: The last eight years prove only one thing. George W. Bush is an idiot—and half of us were idiots to vote for him! The laws of the free market are as indisputable as the physical laws of the universe. If you are stupid (or unlucky) enough to fall out of a tree, does it mean that gravity is wrong?

Myth #2; The New Deal worked. Yes, if you think that doubling government spending, tripling the tax burden with a consequent decrease in unemployment from 25% to a median of 17% (through the 30s) is a walloping success. How successful do you think Barack Obama is going to be at the next election if he reproduces that result?

Myth #3: In bad times, government can run economies more effectively than the private sector. If that were true, Detroit and New Orleans would be the richest cities in America. Ever wondered why places like Detroit stay basket cases for decades despite voting Democrat across the board, year in and year out? If liberal policies worked, the Detroit’s of the world would be fixed. Unfortunately, meddling in the economy, vilifying business and free trade, increasing public spending according to a wish list of party activists and (subsequently) raising taxes to pay for it all, kill any chance of recovery—it’s that simple!

Myth #4: All government spending is stimulative. Apart from the fact that this is blatantly not true—art spending may have the power to move us, but it won’t move our economy one bit—what are the chances of one person (or a small group of people) guessing where the government will get the most bang for it’s spending buck? I love the Orwellian double think that allows friends of Obama to believe that when Geithner was on “Team Bush” he was an idiot and now he is on “Team Obama” he is suddenly omniscient! After all, he has been so successful up to now.

Myth #5: If we ignore it, it will go away! If we don’t report bad news (the morning after, NPR didn’t feel the need to mention the post-Geithnerian stock market plunge at all) or if we don’t ask the President any tough questions, the American people won’t notice that the economic meltdown isn’t being fixed. Not true. The American people are, quite rightly, giving the President and his team the benefit of the doubt, for now. But, the only metric that matters for Obama is not just related to whether or not the economy is working, but, whether or not the American people BELIEVE the economy is working. And that, as we all know, is, like unemployment, a lagging indicator.

Obama has 18 months to get this right. It sounds like a long time. It isn’t.