Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The “D” Word

Getting heavy rotation of late are the pronouncements from the Office of the Propaganda Czar that “the stimulus is working. It brought us back from the brink of a depression.” Or, as Vice President Biden was heard to dramatically intone, “it’s WOR-KING!” and to hiss, “it’s brought us back from the brink of depression!”

As rhetoric on the economy goes, this is high-stakes play. No administration with any sense ever touches the “D” word in the context of its own era. And rightly so – the synapse of economic activity is confidence. To use the “D” word is to tweak confidence, to fiddle with the mysterious and fragile wires and knobs on the black box highly of a developed social organization. All the more so, dear reader, when the national unemployment rate is somewhere between 9.8% and 17+% (best guesses), and people are being foreclosed out of their houses at record rates. Etc.

Risk to what remains of national confidence notwithstanding, the obedient “news” shows are echoing the mantra: “the stimulus is working, it’s brought us back from the brink of…DEPRESSION.” A desperate measure if ever there was one. Could it be that the administration has awakened to the desperate times? The Collective of the Smartest Guys in the Room have ruined the economy such that it will take a generation or more to repair (if it is reparable). Running, yet unable to hide from that fact, has it caught a glimpse of something that has scared it out of its arrogant stupor just enough to realize that whatever it was it is doing is failing dismally across the board? Times are desperate, and the administrati has invoked the nuclear rhetoric option.

For us, this turn of events has evoked images of little people shaking their fists and screaming at the gods of the economy, “it’s WOR-KING!” It’s brought us back from the brink of depression!” But we don’t see, in this vision, the gods saying “Amen.” We see them saying, “Oh, yeah?”

We don’t think the gods will be mocked.

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