DEALING WITH REALITY

 

David Frum, former George W. Bush speech writer, has a very interesting article in the New York Times. It's not very long and I encourage everyone to take a look. In the article, titled: Post-Tea-Party Nation, Frum looks at how today's conservative politicians would rather keep to the talking points play book than deal with the realities that the country finds itself in. A sample.

Too often, conservatives dupe themselves. They wrap themselves in closed information systems based upon pretend information. In this closed information system, banks can collapse without injuring the rest of the economy, tax cuts always pay for themselves and Congressional earmarks cause the federal budget deficit. Even the market collapse has not shaken some conservatives out of their closed information system. It enfolded them more closely within it. This is how to understand the Glenn Beck phenomenon. Every day, Beck offers alternative knowledge — an alternative history of the United States and the world, an alternative system of economics, an alternative reality. As corporate profits soar, the closed information system insists that the free-enterprise system is under assault. As prices slump, we are warned of imminent hyperinflation. As black Americans are crushed under Depression-level unemployment, the administration’s policies are condemned by some conservatives as an outburst of Kenyan racial revenge against the white overlord.

I'm pretty much burned out on politics right now so I'm not going to expound on the meanings of Frum's piece, except to say that I agree with him. Read the article!