Once upon a time, there was a nation, struggling to have a democracy and they built an admirable edifice, a building to house their representatives, where the business of government could be done. But then, men who wanted to seize power, to steer the government in only one direction, the direction they saw as imperative, burned the building and pointed to their opponents as the ones who had set the fire.
And the rest is history.
And this fairy tale repeats itself in every nation which is afflicted with amnesia. Not global amnesia, mind you, but selective amnesia.
So when you have an economy built on debt backed by rising housing prices, which are, after all, an illusion, because your house is not worth more than you paid for it until you have sold it, then you have a sense of wealth, which is, in essence, an illusion, and when you have termites in Wall Street firms eroding the essential value of mortgages--which is the arduous process of verifying the credit worthiness of mortgage holders--then you have a very sad history.
But ask the man in New Hampshire whether he remembers the role played by deregulation of the markets, by the repeal of Glass Steagel, and he says it was all the government's fault. What he remembers is the Federal Government through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made banks make loans to the undeserving and Clinton and the Democrats voted to repeal Glass Steagel, which had since the Depression separated the world of banking into the banks which made mortgage loans and business loans in the community and commercial banks, which were allowed to create whatever risky schemes they desired.
So memory, like history is one long argument.
This is why eyewitness testimony in court, often rendered with great conviction, is such a problem. It seems so real, so undeniable, and it is often so wrong. You have people who are so sure of what they saw, and who they saw do it, and it is only with cross examination you have any hope of showing how uncertain their recall, that reconstruction housed in neurons and drenched in a bath of prejudice and unstated belief and self interest, really is.
So the Republicans want you to believe Medicare is burning and Social Security is burning and only they can "save" either one, by destroying both.
And our fellow citizens stand up and raise an extended arm, locked at the elbow and shout, "Hail Blue Eyed Leader! Only you see clearly into the past and into the future."
And the blue eyed leader tells the story of his mother, who, after his father's early death, got on a bus to Madison, Wisconsin, so she could go to the state college and earn a degree, rode 40 miles a day, five days a week, so she could learn new skills and start her own business. Now, of course, what he doesn't remember is the bus, the road, the public university which taught her those new skills were all government products. He only remembers his mother's individual effort, not the group effort which helped her, which was just there, the way a mother is just there for her child, or the way a father just gives his son a car. That son remembers the 40 mile trip, the individual perseverance, not the group will, which is so big as to be invisible.
No income tax. No sales tax. Cut taxes and the deficit will shrink. Drown government in a bathtub. Live Free or Die.
Let us sit in our rocking chairs around the wood stove and admire the rich and denigrate the poor and talk about the weather, a safe subject about which every opinion is equally valid.
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