Yet, They Keep Voting In The Same Incompetent Losers
Yet, They Keep Voting In The Same Incompetent Losers
Peggy Noonan writes in the WSJ that people have figured out that we're "governed by callous children":
The most sophisticated Americans, experienced in how the country works on the ground, can't figure a way out. Have you heard, "If only we follow Obama and the Democrats, it will all get better"? Or, "If only we follow the Republicans, they'll make it all work again"? I bet you haven't, or not much.This is historic. This is something new in modern political history, and I'm not sure we're fully noticing it. Americans are starting to think the problems we are facing cannot be solved.
Part of the reason is that the problems--debt, spending, war--seem too big. But a larger part is that our government, from the White House through Congress and so many state and local governments, seems to be demonstrating every day that they cannot make things better. They are not offering a new path, they are only offering old paths--spend more, regulate more, tax more in an attempt to make us more healthy locally and nationally. And in the long term everyone--well, not those in government, but most everyone else--seems to know that won't work. It's not a way out. It's not a path through.
Noonan talked to an insurance industry friend of hers about new proposed regulations on the industry:
Rep. Barney Frank had just said on some cable show that the Democrats of the White House and Congress "are trying on every front to increase the role of government in the regulatory area." The executive said of Washington: "They don't understand that people can just stop, get out. I have friends and colleagues who've said to me 'I'm done.'" He spoke of his own increasing tax burden and said, "They don't understand that if they start to tax me so that I'm paying 60%, 55%, I'll stop."
(Here's an example, not from Noonan's piece, but from the LA Times comparing how it works in low-tax Texas versus high-tax California.)
She writes about America's current ruling class:
Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse?I think I know part of the answer. It is that they've never seen things go dark. They came of age during the great abundance, circa 1980-2008 (or 1950-2008, take your pick), and they don't have the habit of worry. They talk about their "concerns"--they're big on that word. But they're not really concerned. They think America is the goose that lays the golden egg. Why not? She laid it in their laps. She laid it in grandpa's lap.
They don't feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases--"strongest nation in the world," "indispensable nation," "unipolar power," "highest standard of living"--and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.
We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists--they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.
| More from Amy Alkon
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