2009: The Fateful Year

Rod, my sense of it is that you're not an unbridled fan of economic globalization. So do you welcome, at least in part, the return of protectionism and nationalism that Wolf fears?

Shelly

I feel about the same as you. I don't like surrendering to a situation, but this seems so beyond me that I can't even sense how much danger that I, you or any of us are in. Bewildering does not begin to cover it.

Anybody who claims to be able to see into the future, political or economic, whether in sunlit optimism or in nervous-Nellie acouplelips, no matter how outwardly "respectable" on the A-lists of cable-producers' Rolodexes, should be required to appear onscreen with a red-neon flasher banded beneath his head and above his name ID, "For Entertainment Only", reinforced with a witch-doctor or moon-and-stars icon after the mad-gremlin avatars that pop out at key moments on game shows and sports broadcasts.

As the greatest living ComiCon, Dave Barry, put it for all time, in the one article published last year that deserves forwarding to every fridge and break-room from Ketchikan to Keokuk, in the form of a month-by-month summary of the year 2008:

"And so it comes to pass that in . . .

OCTOBER

". . . Congress passes, and Technically Still President Bush signs, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, and everyone heaves a sigh of relief as the economy stabilizes for approximately 2.7 seconds, after which it resumes going down the toilet. As world financial markets collapse like fraternity pledges at a keg party and banks fail around the world, the International Monetary Fund implements an emergency program under which anybody who opens a checking account anywhere on earth gets a free developing nation. But it is not enough; the financial system is in utter chaos. At one point a teenage girl in Worcester, Mass., attempts to withdraw $25 from an ATM and winds up acquiring Wells Fargo.

"As the crisis worsens, an angry Congress, determined to get some answers, holds hearings and determines that whoever is responsible for this mess, it is definitely not Congress. Meanwhile all the cable-TV financial experts agree that since they totally failed to predict this disaster, they will stop pretending they have a clue what the markets are going to do and henceforth confine themselves to topics they can discuss knowledgeably, such as what time it is.

"Just kidding! They'd get that wrong, too."

One last thing: honor the memory of the Great Depression - which was not "the next" anything - and the decade it spanned, by dishonoring all those talking of "another Great Depression", or leaning on 1930s analogies. Such usages are as signal of an impoverished vision as those obtaining within my fields of literary journalism and music among those who blather periodically over "the next Mencken (or Edmund Wilson, &c.)" or "the next Dylan". I'm still laughing over the President Beaver Gilligan Bush-as-Churchill metaphors that our tin-can pundits pea-shot with such imbecile alacrity across the annus horribilus of 2001-2005. The only precedent you can lean on with any hope of pillars uncollapsed about you is that if disaster is averted, it will be as much through deaf, dumb and blind luck on the part of those in power as anything.

If there's any tendency among our pundits I've come to loathe, it's the tone of nail-biting, fear-mongering, paranoiac, bleeding-heart Chicken-Little pathos - a habit of soul as much the ironic spawn of those decrying the Age of Affluence as of those most flabbily implicated in its excesses. And if there's one habit of spirit I'd love to see some day gain a renewed purchase, it's stoicism. Nothing you or I, Dearest Reader, are due to face will come close to the hardships and privations endured by those who bore them before us while keeping their wet pants to themselves.

When it comes to anyone preaching with confidence a future either inevitable or highly probable, share not his belief in the iron laws of his own making: All I am saying, is give chance a piece...

"And if there's one habit of spirit I'd love to see some day gain a renewed purchase, it's stoicism. Nothing you or I, Dearest Reader, are due to face will come close to the hardships and privations endured by those who bore them before us while keeping their wet pants to themselves."

Hell yes!

The main point in the Financial Times' article is the fear that nationalism will reappear in the US. (Wolf actually calls "nationalism" a demon of the past.) Key questions: Does the United States have the duty to export its demand for the benefit of the global economy? With these massive deficits, the answer is apparent. NO!! Does the Unites States have the responsibility to endure massive defense expenditures for the benefit of other nations and the global economy? NO!! Contrary to the article, there is no two-year timeline. In my opinion, these decisions have already been made. (Obama in some ways used this as a plank of his campaign.) And if Obama now attempts to readjust his position in this ground swell, he will be a one-term President.

This is nonsense. The future is not "set" by past events, nor by present conditions. The future will be determined by future events, future decisions, future behavior.

This nation, and it's extraordinary people, can and will turn the world around... But ONLY if given back their economic, business, and personal sovreignity. If we unload the backs of the people who are drowning under the millstone of massive government and rules and mandates and malignant beaurocracies, we can and WILL restore and rebuild what needs to be done.

There is no challenge too great, no depth too low, no obstacles too high, for which the individuals, acting as individuals, but with common purpose of enlightened self interest, cannot overcome.

But, it depends upon completely stomping out the absurd BDS, and other nonsense that has infected even YOU, Rob. FREEDOM, and the defense of the individual, is the answer to every problem we have, Rob. Get on with it and start promoting it, instead of this namby pamby welfare-state nannyism like your anti-privatizing social security garbage.

It is time for bold and courageous people, not wimps with "baggage" controlling them with emotion. Grow a pair. Get a backbone. Stop being swayed by your "peer" writers who can't think their way out of a paper bag.

"But why would skeptics of unrestrained globalization view such a prospect as dangerous"?

I suspect Rod just saw the phrase "the danger is extreme" and was unable to contain his excitement long enough to check the context. In the list of Phrases Most Likely To Be Bolded By Rod, that one has to come at or near the top.