The brilliant and colourful
English Lit professor and occasional philosopher Marshall McLuhan presciently
wrote, “Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The Politician will
be only too happy to abdicate in favour of his image, because the image will be
much more powerful than he could ever be.”
McLuhan passed away in
December of 1980, yet he seems to have had the capacity to perceive so many
vacuous celebrity politicians which today fill our electoral landscape – empty
vessels which float to re-election on electoral carpets of wishful thinking and
ignorance. With an uninquisitive media abstaining from accurate reporting, the
misinformed public remains in the dark.
No-where is that ignorance
of “imagery” politicians in more glorious display than on all matters
economic. Politicians may not hold forth on brain surgery or Mars landings, but
they certainly expound profusely on the economy and its forces. This week
we were treated to a rather typical display of incomprehensible idiocy by none
other than a Ranking Member of the House Financial Services Committee. Perhaps
we should underline “Financial Services Committee.”
Congresswoman Maxine Waters
made the following statement,“Yesterday we did have Mr. Bernanke in our committee
and he came to tell us what he’s doing with quantitative easing and that is
trying to stimulate the economy with the bond purchases that he’s been doing
because he’s trying to keep the interest rates low and create jobs–and he said
that if sequestration takes place, that’s going to be a great setback. We don’t
need to be having something like sequestration that’s going to cause these jobs
losses, over 170 million jobs that could be lost–and so he made it very clear
he’s not opposed to cuts but cuts must be done over a long period of time and
in a very planned way rather than this blunt cutting that will be done by
sequestration. . . . . And so, we are here today, one more time, talking about
women and children and families and how we can protect our women, children, and
families and have a decent quality of life–sequestration will set us back. All
of the gains that we have made will be lost with sequestration.”
So there you have it from
very near the top of the Nation’s political hierarchy – a statement providing
clear insight into the frightening lack of comprehension with which the
country’s financial affairs are supervised. Let’s ignore the absurd
claim, “170 million jobs that could be lost,” since there are only 141,614,000 jobs as of January 2013 in total – and well, anyone can make a mistake when making a
supposedly critical statement to the Nation. No?
Of greater import is
Waters’ description and characterization of Bernanke’s presentation to her
Committee? Does she, or any other member of her Committee understand
enough of what Bernanke is doing, or why? She states, “he came
to tell us what he’s doing with quantitative easing and that is trying to
stimulate the economy with the bond purchases that he’s been doing because he’s
trying to keep the interest rates low and create jobs.” Huh?
Does anyone ask her how her brain connects all those dots? That would be
embarrassing, since the dots don’t connect. They don’t and
they can’t. Did anyone on her committee ask Bernanke to connect those
dots?
Her statement demonstrates
that this “imagery” politician is lost and baffled by economic matters
and realities, but she is evidently confident of achieving a successful outcome
for herself through the spewing of unintelligible gibberish as long as it is
followed by a comment about the sky falling on single women and children.
Pretend to somehow be protecting single women and children, which is even
better than championing motherhood and apple pies, and Walters succeeds in
propping her own statue another day.
Waters is simply another
fear-mongering politician ignorant of the fact that the Fiscal Cliff is only
reducing some of the planned increases in discretionary spending.
Almost nothing will be cut from mandatory entitlement programs –
Social Security, and Medicare, or from debt interest payments. The
Nation’s financial problems rests primarily on mandatory expenditures and their
looming explosion. Should someone point that out?
With the quality of
economic acuity we are subject to, as demonstrated by politicians of the Waters
caliber, it is hardly surprising that nothing is being done to bring spending
and debt under control. Nothing is being done to restrain the excessive
growth of government. The complexity is too difficult for uninformed and
uncreative minds of the “imagery” politicians to confront. It is so much
easier to ignore a complicated reality, particularly when doing so might throw
shadows on their ideology.
Let's take another prod from Marshall McLuhan’s stimulative mind, in which he
prophetically defined mindsets of the current leadership in Washington, “I
wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.”
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