Bob Lord

Posted by Bob Lord

Even those on the political left (not the ideological left) consider Chris Hedges to be on the fringe.

That's scary. It's scary because when those making sense are marginalized, the end is near. Here are the closing paragraphs in Hedges' column tody, Our Sinister Dual State:

Societies that once had democratic traditions, or periods when openness was possible, are often seduced into totalitarian systems because those who rule continue to pay outward fealty to the ideals, practices and forms of the old systems. This was true when the Emperor Augustus dismantled the Roman Republic. It was true when Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized control of the autonomous soviets and ruthlessly centralized power. It was true following the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazi fascism. Thomas Paine described despotic government as a fungus growing out of a corrupt civil society. And this is what has happened to us.

No one who lives under constant surveillance, who is subject to detention anywhere at any time, whose conversations, messages, meetings, proclivities and habits are recorded, stored and analyzed, can be described as free. The relationship between the U.S. government and the U.S. citizen is now one of master and slave. Yet the prerogative state assures us that our rights are sacred, that it abides by the will of the people and the consent of the governed.

The last paragraph follows after the jump. 

Posted by Bob Lord There seems to be an awakening of sorts in the writing on inequality recently. It's really not about the top one percent. The top one percent (and its counterpart, the 99 percent) is a useful frame, but it's imprecise at best, and I would say inaccurate. Check out this piece by … Read more

Posted by Bob Lord

I remember reading a piece by Matt Taibbi which he opened by apologizing to himself and his readers for succumbing to the temptation to blast away at David Brooks, after promising not to. Matt, buddy, I'll never be one-tenth the writer you are, but I feel your pain. 

On to the Thuckster.

This second thing about Thucky follows logically from the first, so I need to develop the first just a little further. I recently had an exchange with Thucky in which he ventured out of his comfort zone and tried to do his own analysis. He got it absolutely dead wrong, reaching the opposite conclusion that logic would dictate. I'll reprint the exchange at the end of the post.

So, I'm going to go out on a limb here, and guess that Thucky's a religious dude. I have no specific knowledge here. I've not seen any references to his faith, although there may be some in the comments he posts to posts of my colleagues.

But here's the thing. Thucky idolizes the conservative economists he cites. But he's demonstrated over and over again here that he doesn't have the intellectual wherewithal to understand how they reach their conclusions, or to test their logic with any real rigor. 

So, how does Thucky "know" the supply-siders he worships are right, despite all the evidence to the contrary? How does he disregard plain logic presented to him that undermines his supply-side view? Because he has religion, and that allows him to have faith that his supply-side heroes are not leading him astray.

For that exchange, follow me after the jump.

Posted by Bob Lord In a word: Yes. Recently, there's been a spike in the number of plutocrats whining about their negative press and/or demonizing the poor. Tops on the list of course is billionaire Tom Perkins. A few weeks back, Perkins made headlines for likening the top one percent to German Jews. He retracted … Read more

Posted by Bob Lord

Okay, actually there are several things about Thucky, but I liked the alliteration so I went with it. 

The thing about Thucky for this post is that he purports to be really well read, and perhaps he is, but the synapses just don't fire for him the way they fire for the right-wing economists he worships. In my school days, he would have been referred to as a "dummy try hard." He works really hard. He reads about Rogerson and Prescott. He believes they're really smart. He reads everything they churn out. He knows their conclusions, but doesn't truly grasp how they got there. Nor does he have the mental strength or the intellectual curiosity to challenge anything his heroes throw out there for him. 

Let me digress for a second. I use the male pronoun to refer to Thucky, and have no real basis for doing so. Perhaps it's because most of us tend to assume anonymous people are the same gender as we are, or perhaps it's because the real Thucydides actually was male. I don't know, but I recognize the possibility that when I say Thuckmeister I perhaps should be saying Thuckstress.

Anyhow, I've been having this ongoing debate with ole Thuckarooskie about the effect of tax policy on tax revenue, and I've realized that Thucky doesn't really grasp fundamental concepts. 

He's on safe ground when he just parrots what Rogerson and Prescott and others have concluded. But when he engages in his own analysis, he gets into trouble. 

This gets a bit geeky, but try to hang in here for this example.