There was an election in the USA this last week. And the fallout has been not small. Both of the large parties have disconnected… with … lots of people. Alte can kick this off.
I apologize in advance for my pessimism. It’s not as bad as all that. It’s actually much worse.
So, here is my top five list of:
Things This Election Has Taught Us
Progressives hate us. Not only do they hate us, they think that we are evil incarnate. Or they think that we are insane. Some of them are more moderate and assume that we are merely insanely evil. Some are crying in relief that we are not going to abuse women by confiscating their tampons. That is not actually a joke.
Minorities vote as a block, even when it doesn’t make any sense for them to do so, and even when they have to betray their own faith to do so. They put priority on sticking it to Evil White Men over bettering their own position. This is not new or surprising, but the extent to which this happened is absolutely breathtaking.
Working-class white men, like my own husband, have been abandoned by both political parties. No, really. This is also not a joke. They realize this themselves, which is why so many of them stayed home on election night. When faced with the choice of casting a ballot for the person who would enslave them to Big Government and the one who would sell them out to Big Business, they decided to go with, “No, thanks.”
Christians in general, orthodox Christians in particular, and orthodox Catholics to be very specific, are seen as a problem that needs to be solved. Their focus on petty wedge-issues like the “right to life” and “upholding the sanctity of marriage” results in a distraction from bigger questions like, “Should we print more fiat money in order to finance more spending or should we print a heck of a lot more of it?” This is now the consensus on the left and on what passes for the right.
Now, if Christians are seen as a problem to be solved, and moralilty is seen as less important than the state’s balance sheet, something is wrong. Virtue should lead, not pragmatism. An honourable man or government will not lie about the balance sheet, nor their agenda. (As an aside, it is generally the person who accuses you of lying who is untruthful),
The die, however, is cast for the next four years. During that time, I expect things to get much worse in the USA. People are already being laid off because the extra head count of employees will cripple businesses given the costs they are facing from the new regulations coming out of Obama-care.
In the end it will be morals and economics that count, not demographics. Bill Price has one of the more balanced analyses of this...
For years, I’ve noticed that old white liberals consistently portray their political rivals as, well… Old and white. It’s as though they are stuck back in 1972, and think they are still 20-somethings battling Richard Nixon. It’s both amusing and annoying at the same time, but for once I’d like to see some honesty about this issue.
Apparently, Obama won largely on the old, white vote, especially in the old, white stronghold of the Northeast.
Why are white liberal states so old? Because liberals don’t have many children. And because they are still firmly attached to the old American Republican/Democrat paradigm (which is, for better or worse, finally crumbling), they are quite fearful of being outbred by their conservative rivals. This is why they cling to the hope that young minorities will join them in their high-minded Puritan ideals and lifestyle, which is not going to happen, but hey, they’ll be dead by that time anyway.
So, allow me to predict a bit of what the American political future will look like based on demographics:
White people will be more conservative, minorities will remain as they are (i.e. they’ll vote Democrat but will not be “liberals”), and white liberals will be largely dead or in nursing homes (real estate is going to be pretty cheap in New England in a decade or so). Young liberals, AKA progressives, will constitute a shrinking proportion of the national population. The SWPL lifestyle will be marginalized, the country will be divided roughly in two between whites and minorities, and we’ll begin to see the emergence of truly distinct populations separated by ethnicity and geography, and probably language in some cases.
Yes, it’s true: Old white people – like all old people – are on the way out. But the old whites with kids and grandkids will see their legacy carry on. Old white liberals, not so much.
The last point gives me hope. I have three kids, three grandkids… and two of the kinder are still in high school. At 52. I also note that the conservative Presbyterian congregations are full of younger beleivers with their kids (20 and 30 somethings) while the liberal churches… are filled with old, white men. I also note that the younger group is mixed-race. It matters less now what ethnic group you come from as how together and Christian is your family.
The economic problem, however, is simple: The US is toast. I have deliberately not had stocks and bonds directly for about four years: the market is too rigged for me to read it, and I never want to have a US Tax (Social security) number. The only reason I have a pension fund is that my employer matches my dollars and their dolalrs are pre-tax and it is run by smart people who make those calls. Mark Steyn puts it better...
The good news is that reality (to use a quaint expression) doesn’t need to swing a couple of thousand soccer moms in northern Virginia. Reality doesn’t need to crack 270 in the Electoral College. Reality can get 1.3 percent of the popular vote and still trump everything else. In the course of his first term, Obama increased the federal debt by just shy of $6 trillion and in return grew the economy by $905 billion. So, as Lance Roberts at Street Talk Live pointed out, in order to generate every dollar of economic growth the United States had to borrow about five dollars and 60 cents. There’s no one out there on the planet — whether it’s “the rich” or the Chinese — who can afford to carry on bankrolling that rate of return. According to one CBO analysis, U.S.-government spending is sustainable as long as the rest of the world is prepared to sink 19 percent of its GDP into U.S. Treasury debt. We already know the answer to that: In order to avoid the public humiliation of a failed bond auction, the U.S. Treasury sells 70 percent of the debt it issues to the Federal Reserve — which is to say the left hand of the U.S. government is borrowing money from the right hand of the U.S. government. It’s government as a Nigerian e-mail scam, with Ben Bernanke playing the role of the dictator’s widow with $4 trillion under her bed that she’s willing to wire to Timmy Geithner as soon as he sends her his bank-account details.
If that’s all a bit too technical, here’s the gist: There’s nothing holding the joint up.
So Washington cannot be saved from itself. For the moment, tend to your state, and county, town and school district, and demonstrate the virtues of responsible self-government at the local level. Americans as a whole have joined the rest of the Western world in voting themselves a lifestyle they are not willing to earn. The longer any course correction is postponed the more convulsive it will be. Alas, on Tuesday, the electorate opted to defer it for another four years. I doubt they’ll get that long.
The government is always parasitical. At best, it runs a defence system and honest courts. You can do that quite nicely with under a tithe of income. Not 30%, 40%, 50%. When you get to that level of intervention and “management” the government is the problem, not the solution. It is unsustainable.
The only reason the rest of the Anglosphere has not fallen over is that we reformed (cut back) the state by deregulation and budget cuts in the 1980s and 1990s. The state has grown over the last two decades, and in these tight times, it is being pruned.
The US did not do this. They were rich, so they could afford to be stupid. But they will not be rich for much longer if they continue down this path.
