The Conservative Crack-Up

At the risk of mistaking sequence for symmetry, the excerpt reminds me of another post I just read on the function of bubbles:

I like anyone who builds a worldview around bubblesome finance. Nevertheless, putting on my skeptical academic hat, I think he has slipped into the dangerous waters of functionalism, believing that social or economic events happen because they are needed to happen. There is a longstanding critique of such reasoning, but I'll spare you. The point is that functionalist explanations don't really explain. For instance, Janszen's article doesn't explain why some economies are more bubble-prone than others, nor does it offer a reason why efforts of insiders to inflate a new sector will necessarily succeed.

Hi there, thanks for the link and thoughts. To push the analogy over the cliff, I'd say that Fox News is the subprime lender of the authoritarian bubble, Jonah Goldberg is the poor sap who bought into the hysteria at the peak of the market and is now completely underwater, miserable, and losing his mind, and American Idol is...why, John McCain of course!

I would find your argument a bit more believable if it didn't rest on the assumption that your fellow citizens are stupid. That's not a very democratic idea yet sadly it's a very Democratic one these days. It's hard to win a majority when you call everyone not in lockstep with you racist or misogynist.

BTW, good luck with the primary fight. There are still a few American voters the Dems haven't alienated yet.

By no means do I believe all of my fellow citizens are racist, misogynist, or stupid. Not at all. Most of them never listen to talk radio or watch the Faux News Channel. Most Americans are smarter and more generous in spirit than that.

But those who do tend to be so loud, and so prone to temper tantrums, that they have a disproportionate effect on the whole conversation. I'd like to think this might change, at some point. Chances are, most citizens would, too.

There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop.