Following folly with folly
by digby
Ezra Klein quotes Herbert Hoover this morning and notices that it sounds remarkably familiar. Hoover said this in 1932:
Nothing is more important than balancing the budget with the least increase in taxes. The Federal Government should be in such position that it will need issue no securities which increase the public debt after the beginning of the next fiscal year, July 1. That is vital to the still further promotion of employment and agriculture. It gives positive assurance to business and industry that the Government will keep out of the money market and allow industry and agriculture to borrow the monies required for the conduct of business.
I don’t know why people are saying exactly the same words today. It’s one of more startling phenomenons I’ve seen in my lifetime. On the other hand, the Iraq war had the same surreal quality to it as well.Recall this crazy blather:
Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today — and we do — does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?
Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles — far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations — in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. We have also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We are concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) for missions targeting the United States. And of course, sophisticated delivery systems are not required for a chemical or biological attack — all that might be required are a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to deliver it.
And that is the source of our urgent concern about Saddam Hussein’s links to international terrorist groups.
Of course, nothing quite beats this, after the fact:
“The larger point is and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power …”
Government’s lie and even very smart people get caught up in what later appears to have been some sort of mass hysteria. I don’t know why this happens — it appears to be a psychological phenomenon. (And it seems to me to be happening more lately (or maybe it’s just that the stakes are getting higher) But this willingness — eagerness — to throw hard won knowledge and plain common sense out the window in these elite stampedes is disorienting and weird even for the most skeptical among us.
One thing I will say for Iraq — people always react to perceived physical threats emotionally and are easily manipulated, as they were after 9/11. The economic hysteria, on the other hand, stems from an esoteric debate that should see a lot more courage on the part of academics and others who know better. But then, many of those who led the cheerleading for the Iraq war came from academic circles as well — assuring all of us that “the storm was gathering” and we had to get him before he got us. So maybe that’s just par for the course after all.
The press, however, should always, every time, without question be skeptical of whatever powerful people tell them. Their job is to demand proof, pin them down, work them hard to prove what they’re saying. Unfortunately, in this world of access journalism and TV celebrity and establishment consensus, the press is usually part of the problem too.
So, we the people watch from our living rooms as the political elite lead us once again into hell, knowing that what Herbert Hoover said in 1932 is no more right today than it was then. And yet, this time we’re going to follow his advice and live through the consequences for reasons that are obscure and unfathomable. And I’m sure we’ll soon have some austerity apologists come forth as David Ignatius did in 2005, to explain that we should be grateful for such deception because in the long run everything will be hunky dory:
Pessimists increasingly argue that Iraq may be going the way of Lebanon in the 1970s. I hope that isn’t so, and that Iraq avoids civil war. But people should realize that even Lebanonization wouldn’t be the end of the story. The Lebanese turned to sectarian militias when their army and police couldn’t provide security. But through more than 15 years of civil war, Lebanon continued to have a president, a prime minister, a parliament and an army. The country was on ice, in effect, while the sectarian battles raged. The national identity survived, and it came roaring back this spring in the Cedar Revolution that drove out Syrian troops.
The good news, you see, is that life goes on. Unfortunately, as someone who knew something about Herbert Hoover’s prescription said, we’ll all be dead. Too bad for us.
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