Friday, August 19, 2011

The Gap

Does it matter that a real, bona fide conservative Republican like historian Bruce Bartlett thinks the Texas Governor Rick Perry is an idiot? Not really, and face it, Perry is the kind of idiot that appeals to the kind of Americans who somehow have taken control of what passes for dialog today -- or at least have drowned it out with their idiocy and superstition. Like making a copy of a copy of a copy, Perry would be the blurriest and least readable page in the Bush dynasty: George III

I confess, when I heard that pathetic American primitive condescending to a schoolboy, telling him that Evolution is a theory that has gaps in it, my first comment didn't contain words nearly as polite as 'idiot.' But upon further reflection, I can see a lot of gaps in Rick Perry and I'm willing to bet that there are gaps between his synapses big enough to hide all the creation myths of the world, not just the one it's profitable for him to accept as truth and enforce as a standard on the rest of us. Sadly his misunderstanding of science is as great as his ignorance of economics and history and. . . well it's a very long list, because Rick Perry is an idiot.

But the Fed is "treasonous" says Perry and not because it actually is in any way, by any definition of the term, but because it provides yet another enemy for the Teadogs to bark at and makes him a leader, a dragonslayer, the Great Stupid Hope. It's treasonous because it delights the swamp critters and desert rats and mountain men; the losers and lamebrains, the anger addicts and the addlepates. The people who eat fried butter on a stick and watch Fox News love to see anyone so brave as to tell them suits and them college boys all about how there weren't no universe 7000 years ago -- because it makes the ignorant feel they're important, that they have a cause, that the world belongs to them.

Rick Perry's audience doesn't really know what the Fed is or what it does or how capitalism works or what Socialism is. Understanding genetics and evolution is as far beyond them as the level of wealth disparity their gullibility supports, nor do they question the Tealords when they're told the stimulus package didn't work or that entitlement programs and NPR and Planned Parenthood have bankrupted the country or that an extra few grand in my pockets will create US jobs. They believe this idiot when he tells them that Evolution, like gravity, is "only a theory." They believe because it justifies their abject ignorance and lets them pretend. In a part of the country where half the population couldn't manage to graduate 4th rate high schools it's a matter of pride to identify with one's idiotic, back of the schoolroom, tobaccy chewin' peers and so we have Rick Perry being taken seriously as presidential material, hell bent to destroy the country just to prove that "idiots rule."

Why is the Fed treasonous rather than timid and inept? Because as Bartlett points out, the Fed may be the only entity not yet tied down by the Lilliputian Teatwits. The only entity with any possibility of getting America to spend again, to bypass the political fatwa imposed by the Republicans occupying Congress like squatters -- to get those countless billions sitting in corporate coffers flowing through the capitalist system to create demand which creates jobs, which create growth. But discussing elementary economics with anyone like Rick Perry is like discussing calculus with a hamster -- and that's a gap that will never close.

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