04 February 2003
So nothing else has worked to rally support for the war; now they're floating the idea that the war will bring economic recovery and the delay in launching it is keeping it down:
Yahoo News Story Comparing 1991 To Today
What this story forgets is that the war then helped push the economy right into the abyss, contrary to the popular belief that war solves economic problems. The model for this is the economic boom after the second world war, which is a myth that ignores that the depression was going on over a decade before WW2 and that recovery had little to do with the war, except in that the US was one of the very few industrial countries after the war which hadn't had its factories decimated, so of course it was able to get a jump on the others. Not to mention that the production levels the war got industry used to were channeled into both regular production and heavy military industry. The latter, in fact, has been what has kept America ahead for such a long time, and it was mainly an innovation of WW2. Prior to that there wasn't a "military-industrial complex" of the sort we're used to.
But since then wars have been, if anything, economic sinkholes. The drain it caused on the economy was really all that stopped the war in Vietnam; Wall Street wanted it gone at that point.(sentimentally saying the protesters stopped it is a myth that aids the previously mentioned myth) And the Gulf War too.
But now they say, hey, we'd love to bring the economy back but this darn shilly-shallying about the war is making Wall Street nervous and cautious. Let us have our war and you, the American herd, will have fresh new green fields in which to graze. Please go "baa" for us and there will be pie in the sky for all!
Which of course has been the administration's aim all along, I think. Take away prosperity and then let people remember what it's like to be hungry again, then they'll do whatever you want.
Indeed, that was their strategy during Bush 1 but it didn't work. Instead they placed the blame where it belonged and threw his ass out. Revolutions don't generally occur when people are simply starved and demoralized in the West. They occur when there has been a period of things getting better which is suddenly taken away.
I hate Bush for this. Even I for a second consider, "Well, if they have their war I might be employed again, if for no other reason that so many troops will go and room will be therefore made." Then I slap myself, realizing I'm hoping people will die so I can get a paycheck again.
Then again, I WANT a paycheck again. And it's damn cruel of Bush to dangle this empty, superstitious, irrational hope toward the American public, but it's probably not bad political strategy from his viewpoint because it seems to be working.
They're a careful, patient lot, these right-wing radicals that call themselves conservative. They keep their plans slow and meticulous and gradual so the frog never realizes the water is boiling. If the American public wasn't so used to thinking a deliberate plan involves sudden things they can see, rather than careful accretion, they'd notice. But these are the same people trying to destroy Roe v. Wade not by a single SCOTUS decision but by a decades-long building of precedent which won't be noticed. They've got time and they use it.
The only real question is: at the next election, will the American people reward incompetence or will they wise up again?
Wish I knew. Meanwhile my money runs out.
Yahoo News Story Comparing 1991 To Today
What this story forgets is that the war then helped push the economy right into the abyss, contrary to the popular belief that war solves economic problems. The model for this is the economic boom after the second world war, which is a myth that ignores that the depression was going on over a decade before WW2 and that recovery had little to do with the war, except in that the US was one of the very few industrial countries after the war which hadn't had its factories decimated, so of course it was able to get a jump on the others. Not to mention that the production levels the war got industry used to were channeled into both regular production and heavy military industry. The latter, in fact, has been what has kept America ahead for such a long time, and it was mainly an innovation of WW2. Prior to that there wasn't a "military-industrial complex" of the sort we're used to.
But since then wars have been, if anything, economic sinkholes. The drain it caused on the economy was really all that stopped the war in Vietnam; Wall Street wanted it gone at that point.(sentimentally saying the protesters stopped it is a myth that aids the previously mentioned myth) And the Gulf War too.
But now they say, hey, we'd love to bring the economy back but this darn shilly-shallying about the war is making Wall Street nervous and cautious. Let us have our war and you, the American herd, will have fresh new green fields in which to graze. Please go "baa" for us and there will be pie in the sky for all!
Which of course has been the administration's aim all along, I think. Take away prosperity and then let people remember what it's like to be hungry again, then they'll do whatever you want.
Indeed, that was their strategy during Bush 1 but it didn't work. Instead they placed the blame where it belonged and threw his ass out. Revolutions don't generally occur when people are simply starved and demoralized in the West. They occur when there has been a period of things getting better which is suddenly taken away.
I hate Bush for this. Even I for a second consider, "Well, if they have their war I might be employed again, if for no other reason that so many troops will go and room will be therefore made." Then I slap myself, realizing I'm hoping people will die so I can get a paycheck again.
Then again, I WANT a paycheck again. And it's damn cruel of Bush to dangle this empty, superstitious, irrational hope toward the American public, but it's probably not bad political strategy from his viewpoint because it seems to be working.
They're a careful, patient lot, these right-wing radicals that call themselves conservative. They keep their plans slow and meticulous and gradual so the frog never realizes the water is boiling. If the American public wasn't so used to thinking a deliberate plan involves sudden things they can see, rather than careful accretion, they'd notice. But these are the same people trying to destroy Roe v. Wade not by a single SCOTUS decision but by a decades-long building of precedent which won't be noticed. They've got time and they use it.
The only real question is: at the next election, will the American people reward incompetence or will they wise up again?
Wish I knew. Meanwhile my money runs out.
Labels: politics
¶ Tuesday, February 04, 2003
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