At a time of political excess, when a
crisis is coming fast, government tends to do things that are so
jaw-droppingly dumb it’s almost impossible for historians to believe
them in retrospect.
The ultimate expression of this
stupidity, of course, was the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff. Similar events include the
1857 Dred Scott Decision, the
1895 Gold Bond
and the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty.
All these events have something in
common. They are attempts by the dieing Thesis to make permanent the
extremes of the thesis’ belief system.
We are now going through a period like
that regarding the Nixon-Reagan-Bush Thesis. Stomping on common
middle-class tax donation dodges
and privatizing the IRS
while at the same time cutting in half the number of agents looking
at wealthy individuals
are all of a piece.
It’s willful, political tone deafness.
So, too, is the current willful
ignorance over the President’s NSA wiretaps.
This is the chief mark of excess, the way “conventional wisdom”
enables it, and the way those around the government refuse to
consider any other path but acceptance. The court has spoken. The
bond has been sold. The tariff has been passed. The War must
continue. (The picture, by the way, is of Judge Anna Johnston Diggs Taylor, whose first husband, Rep. Charlie Diggs, was first head of the Congressional Black Caucus, and who struck down the NSA program last week.)
Supporters of the President’s economic
policies have been able to excuse the economic reality until now with
talk of nonsense like the Laffer Curve
(the laughter curve would be more like it) but now the bark is off,
so to speak. They are still unwilling to accept that the NSA wiretaps
are obviously illegal, and obvious felonies.
In the process the whole point of the
current excess is stripped bare. In this case it aims to create a new
oligarchic authoritarianism, where those whose parents were rich –
George W. Bush, Paris Hilton, etc. etc. — are permanently masters
over everyone else, and where social mobility is destroyed on behalf
of the laziest, most noisome among us.
You could say the same thing about Dred
Scott – it was an attempt to force slavery on the north. Or the
Gold Bond, an attempt to give private financiers control of the
government. Or the Smoot-Hawley tariff, an attempt to isolate America
from the world and its problems. Or the War on Poverty, with its
great aims and colossal failure.
The point is that all these past
actions failed in their aims. Slavery was ended. The government was
reformed. The U.S. rejected isolationism. The War on Poverty ended,
and poverty won.
Right or wrong isn’t the point here.
The point is excess. The point is crisis. The point is that, for the
Nixon Thesis of Conflict, the end is undoubtedly near.
