Editorial
Part 1: America, The Free + The Complex
Uncle Sam is an elderly man with white hair and a goatee. He usually wears a white top hat with white stars on a blue band, and trousers that look like the American flag. But Sam is really not an actual person, but the fictional personification of the initials ‘U’+‘S’, as in, the United States. Today, gone is an erstwhile strong and proud Uncle Sam. Unlike the ruggedly handsome man on early 20th century posters authoritatively instructing young men to enlist and win the war against Hitler, today’s Uncle Sam is mostly presented as confused and downright emaciated. He may be the ‘the comeback kid,’ when juxtaposed with the UK – but many think America is weak; much too broke and unable to do great things while China struts its stuff in Africa. And people believe that the U.S. will collapse under the weight of its former glory.
But despite what gold and silver hawkers, pundits, faux prognosticators or even U.S. politicians say; and in spite of America’s oxymora plus partisan rancor – a discombobulating blob of chaos, fiscal cliffs, sequesters and deficits – the fundamentals of the American economy are strong.
That is why it may make sense to view America’s ‘general malaise’ from the standpoint of those who benefit when the economy is either bearish or bullish. We may, in doing this, unravel the ‘conspiracy’ that manifests itself in recalcitrant memes and oftentimes misleading talking points thrown about by both Republicans and Democrats. Illustratively, in assigning Obama that ‘food stamp president’ moniker, the GOP knows fully well that the recent need for government assistance has more to do with the recent global downturn than with the president’s socialistic tendencies. And yet they assiduously apportion blame; a brilliant move since Democrats will, undoubtedly, hold the scarlet letter should the U.S. return to recession.
Conversely, that many Americans see the federal government as a threat to their freedom is nothing short of befuddling. This specific populace apparently venerates Reagan’s 1980’s supply side economics, while benefitting from an Eisenhower-built interstate highway – one that really, REALLY, expanded the reach of government. And conservatives clothed themselves in ‘compassion’ when they ignored George W. Bush’s deficit inducing wars, a federal healthcare expansion and the redistributive tax cuts!
Today, as they call Obama a Marxist, older conservatives ironically pay homage to Karl Marx by taking social security benefits, and dissonance between the Washington beltway and the rest of America is on full display when congressional Republicans harangue Obama for the 2009 stimulus sidesplittingly, appear at events to celebrate jobs created by the much needed US$787 billion infusion into the teetering economy.
In truth – Collective cojones and political temerity aside – the Great Communicator allowed the GOP message of deficit-induced economic doom to muddy the confident expenditure plexus upon which this consumer economy depends. Then Obamacare became synonymous with Beelzebub; bank regulation legislation meant to avoid future financial crises was called totalitarianism, and the rescuing of a once proud US auto industry was, basically, Obama interfering in the gospel according to Adam Smith.
Still, given how encumbering they were, Republicans actually assured Obama’s first term success. Sans conservative support, the US economy, somewhat, thrived; sufficiently, in fact, to handily defeat a late-surging Mitt Romney.
That said, we must address the fact that a political machine of old is now an even more pervasive leviathan – one that wields a willfully sinister and cynical tool thanks to industrious conservative media personalities like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.
The threesome perfects propaganda – finding needles of difference in this huge haystack of American egalitarianism. Hence, even when conservatives believe in a woman’s right to privacy; in same sex couples’ right to the bliss and misery of holy matrimony, in the ‘sacrosanct-ness’ of the second amendment but not in automatic weapons, Messrs. Limbaugh, O’Reilly, Hannity, et al rival respectable Shakespearean villains: They effectively spew bile, whisper canards – and beautifully juxtapose the federal government activity with households like yours and ours. They tell us that the U.S. spends much more than it brings in. And then they seduce us with the truism that we’d court disaster if we lived beyond our means.
But no one counters with the fact that households neither print legal tender, nor have unlimited lines of credit because everyone trusts their investment acumen and ability to pay back. And so, Americans have a new boogeyman: The Deficit. Obama is a generational thief. Americans now deleverage more often. They pay Uncle Henry back and in the process, they starve Uncle Sam. Sam grows thinner and more anxious; his only fault being that he’s related to Henry.
The Editorial Board,
The Habari Network
February 25, 2013
For Comments and Asides, please address correspondence to the Editor – editor@thehabarinetwork.com