Ahistoricity

I heard a news-soundbyte yesterday with someone stating that we may be heading toward a “historic Recession”.  Not exactly anything anyone wants to hear.  In 1933, Walter Lipmann, writing on the Great Depression, wrote something to the effect that this generation is “lucky” to get the chance to see “how history is made”.  This cues in my mind any number of famous Depression era photographs, which is to suggest that I’m sure that the Dust Bowl denziens and the 30 percent lingering jobless soup-line waiting masses enjoyed this great History Lesson.

It is, of course, absurd to compare our current Economic situation with 1932, except in spots and in passing.  I don’t know what a complete economic breakdown in the twenty-first century looks like, but this isn’t it.  The crux of the Phil Gram “Nation of whiners” line is somewhere floating in the comparison of bleak times with far greater bleak times of a previous era, and it not matching up.  Never mind what you have with Gram is the current state of “Let them Cake”, or to torture metaphors further “We’ll take this cake, and let you eat that cake over there.”  (Or maybe we’re in the land of “Not so much ‘Little Pink Houses for you and me’ but “Little Houses, and … let’s maybe skip the pink paint for now, eh?”)

The tug of war which made Dick Gephardt look absurd with the constant stating of the phrase “…since the Hoover Administration” has swung the other way.  It is a strange sea-changing battle which frequently flubs the Democrats who lose sight of Aspirational politics, which is that Americans don’t like to be reminded that they’re poor.  But now we see the George Wills and the Sean Hannitys of the world backing up the “nation of whiners” comment, which suggests that — at least in Hannity’s case since Will would gladly call himself an elitist– they’re not in much of a position to bandy about the term “Elitist” or “Elites”.

Maybe it’s equally ahistorical to categorically deny historical comparisons to far bleaker past moments and eras in history as it is to make those comparisons.  We are tripping into a transitional age of some sort, where policy should be dominated by preparing to move us past the current era which is precipated by the flow of plentiful cheap oil.  In this sense, Phil Gramm is correct — it is a mental Recession… the logjam we are in comes from not having removed the parameters of the past age.

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