The following is purely bi-partisan in its vitriol, but the crystallizing moment occurred on Tuesday when a former nude model with a truck beat a boring, arrogant annointee of the Massachusetts Democratic Party. I don't blame the electorate for gagging on the Kennedy heir designate though I wish their disgust could have been rewarded by something more than a face with nothing more to recommend him than Palin worship. While hardly the nail in the coffin of needed reform, Senator Scott Brown is a fine symbol for the delusions sweeping America. Please read on and feel free to weep.
Delusion One: A defeat for healthcare reform is good for America. Actually, it's a disaster. We're speeding toward 20% of GDP being spent on the sector, which is much like putting a very fat man in the corner of a rowboat. The overconcentration is enough to tip the whole thing over and everyone gets wet. We will have to reform healthcare; the only real question is whether we want to do it from the boat or the water.
Delusion Two: China will lead the way out of this mess. True, it's growing again at over 8% annually, but perhaps that has something to do with a $560 billion stimulus and what's obviously a growing real estate bubble. And just as always happens, 'experts' are happy to tell us why the Chinese case is different from every historical precedent and that the bubble won't pop. They're right in that China is different, but wrong about their prognosis. Bubbles always pop, just never for an expected reason. And when that happens, the dragon will fall on its face, just like all the other superpowers before them.
Delusion Three: The banking system is healthy again, so we should leave it alone. Real unemployment, including the underemployed, is near 20%. Small business lending has not increased. Home foreclosures are accelerating. Meanwhile anyone who isn't too big to fail is left to his own devices, and the same practices that caused the worst economic disaster in nearly a century are left in place. Logic we suggest that we should act before history is allowed to repeat itself.
Delusion Four: This is Barak Obama's fault. To my friends on both the left and right, I would remind you that he is a mere mortal (neither heaven sent or demonic). Obama is constrained by a little something called the separation of powers, which we all used to think a good thing. He's made plenty of mistakes, but not nearly so many as the collections of self-serving job-preservationists that inhabit both houses of Congress. By way of proof, I offer a single opprobrious example, Senator Arlen Specter.
Delusion Five: We're dealing with this mess at the ballot box. Actually, we allow the parties to put up all manners of yahoos. Once elected, they invariably cozy up to one kind of special interest - the well-funded kind - so as to get the funding to stay in office. Perhaps we should insist on better candidates, go to the inconvenience of voting for them, and then ask them to leave - via term limits - before they outstay their welcome.