Practical politics consists of ignoring facts. -- Henry Brooks Adams
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning, but without understanding. -- Louis D. Brandeis
American politics is polarized. Ideologues stand at the outer boundaries of common sense and hurl specially crafted epithets learned and copied from the past rhetoric of the opponents. Democrats immediately take the position most recently abandoned by the Republicans and vice versa. All in all, the words are blunted by the wear and tear of politicians’ regular usage. They think we’re too stupid to notice the soup is getting weaker for all the “watering down” being done.
Now we have a major argument going on because the Congress isn’t cutting (gouging) the budget deeply enough. The Tea Parties want to bleed the infected, bloating organ known as the Budget in order to save the patient.
The first fact politicians ignored concerned the budgetary and fiscal reality the United States (and thus the world monetary system) is a sham. Not a shame, a sham (though both are applicable). The entire system is based on nothing more than the reputation of the governmental entity issuing the currency. Nobody follows the Gold Standard. Silver is ignored as a precious metal standard. Oil is a substance noted more for its inability to stabilize monetary formats. Speculation kills economies.
John Maynard Keynes started the entire mess by offering what some believe is an improbable theory allowing no more substantive proof of feasibility than what was said above. It’s all based on the perceived integrity of the nation used as the basis of the world currency market. It works well as long as the specific nation is both feared and respected in the market. Traditionally America held this position based on our ability to produce products and goods needed around the world.
America proved it could impact world markets. Who else could engage an economic engine capable of ending 2 (two) World Wars? Based on the manufacturing output of American Industry the necessary manpower, trained soldiers and the technologically superior weaponry brought about the end of hostilities killing millions over the course of the wars. But other nations sought technological maturity and developmental ascendancy. Politics polluted the economic strategy more and more until the production ethic of America morphed into something virtually unrecognizable. We’ve slowed production in favor of cheaper imports.
America has always had the agricultural bounty necessary to feed the world. Politics entered the arena and the nation’s conscience was turned against itself. Instead of charity for the needy, we started giving away resources for the political impact it could produce. Farmers stopped producing to artificially inflate prices in the country while letting past production rot in silos across the country.
NAFTA, CAFTA and the other alphabet soup programs requiring imports of basic goods have killed our economy. Our originally America-based industries have been allowed to ship jobs out-of-country to “cut costs”. Costs are cut, profits swell and America’s mints produce more and more money worth less and less on the world market because the Balance of Trade is sadly mounted on a misshapen fulcrum-Keynesian Economic Theory.
The integrity of any national economic system is based on the foundational element of what it produces against what it consumes. When consumption exceeds production there is no integrity to the system. More is owed monetarily than is produced in the market. The system becomes “upside down”; and the economic vertigo felt in the market is very much akin to being sea-sick. If you keep doing what got you sick in the first place; you keep getting sick without hope of recovery.
This is what the two quotes above are trying to get across. Politics, and the power it engenders, relies on ignoring the truth and spinning the perception of that truth so the politician best benefits. And the second quote tells us the problem isn’t normally caused by bad men (I won’t mention George Soros’ motivations) but by men and women believing everything they’ve been told simply because some hyper-educated dumb bass says it’s so.
It’s a matter of credentials overpowering credibility.
Thanks for listening
