What lurks in hiding for us there? Nothing good, and that is the general feeling one gets from the ripples and small currents in the wide ocean of the blogosphere. I’ve been paddling in that ocean since … 2002, when I gave up on Slate as an original aggregator news site shortly after 9-11, because the communities which gathered in the various comments sections just got too angry and irrational for words. Something let me to Instapundit, and through his links to the original incarnation of Sgt. Stryker’s Daily Brief. I became a contributor when the original Stryker appealed for other contributors and have been paddling away at the margins of the digital information ocean ever since. Back in the pre-internet day, I had subscriptions to all kinds of magazines. As a military public relations professional, I reasoned that I should know when and from which direction the next political-military-social sh*t-storm would arrive. Tracking blogs and digital media serves the same purpose for me that print media once did.
Biden
Civility
In the aftermath of large crowds chanting “Lets Go, Brandon” or the ruder, cruder variant, certain prog media figures are reacting by ostentatiously clutching their pearls and demanding civility. In response to such demands, many of us who have paid attention over the years are pointing out that the civility ship has long sailed … in fact, circumnavigated the world, crashed into the homeport dock, burned to the waterline, and sank in a gusher of steam.
A Prototype for Biden?
President Biden’s bizarre behavior during media appearances reminds me of something. The British general Edward Spears, who was Churchill’s personal emissary to the French Army during the campaign of 1940, described a meeting he had with Philipe Petain during the final desperate days of that campaign…his objective being to turn the old general away from his growing defeatist orientation and toward the direction of resistance. When Spears said that “What France needs today, Monsieur le Marechal, is another Joan of Arc”, the general’s reaction was startling:
“Once more he was all animation. His face lit up. “Have you read my speech on Joan of Arc?’ (no) ‘Well, that is too bad…I made it at Rouen, when was it, in 1937? 38? It was an extremely fine speech, I may say. I shall read it to you.”
To Spears’ consternation (for the military situation was very urgent), Petain began to search for a copy of the speech. Unable to find it, he summoned his chief of staff, who finally found it. The speech was very, very long, and Petain read it in a monotone. “I do not think he was really proud of that speech as a great achievement, for he did not caress it by inflections of voice as a sculptor might stroke a statue he believed to be a great work of art. He was recalling rather the pomp and circumstance of its delivery, the applause, and he wanted to include me in that admiring audience of years ago.”
And when the speech finally ended, Petain pointed out that “Joan of Arc was a peasant of France,” talked about the importance of peasants, and insisted in locating and reading another speech, this one about the French peasants.
“Genuine alarm brought me back to realities. Time was passing, I had endless work to do. The London telephone was certainly calling. How could I get away?”
Spears finally made his escape. But doesn’t Petain’s retreat to his old speeches, and, further back, to his old victories, mirror Biden’s verbal retreat back to the days when he played shortstop, and such?
A month or so earlier, Spears had discussed some of the key players in France with his combative friend, the Interior Minister Georges Mandel. Concerning Petain, Mandel had been dismissive:
“Surely you have seen for yourself–barely alive–and what there is left is pure vanity. He became a Hidalgo in Spain.”
I don’t think Biden has ever spent any significant time in Spain, but “what there is left is pure vanity” seems like a pretty good description of the man.
(The quotes are from Spears’ memoir Assignment to Catastrophe, a two-book series which is essential reading for anyone interested in the events of that period.)
Paying for Biden’s Dreams
President Biden says, in connection with his ‘infrastructure’ plan, that “We’re going to pay for everything we spend.”
Actually, it’s you that would pay for this proposed spending. Exactly how much you would pay, and what forms your cash outflows would take, are dependent on your individual situation, but make no mistake: you would pay.
You would likely pay through higher direct taxes–yes, it is claimed that there would be no tax increases for those earning less than $400K/year (family income), but there are spending increases built into or implied in the ‘infrastructure’ bill that imply much higher spending…and taxing..over time. You would pay, in higher prices, lower wages, and reduced investment returns for those corporate tax hikes, which Biden seems to view as a source of free money. You would likely pay in terms of reduced job opportunities…possibly even outright job loss…as a consequence of a damaged US business climate.
Above and beyond the specific details, the ‘infrastructure’ plan and its supporting tax represent an attempt to redirect a greatly-increased part of the national income generated by Americans into the hands of government and of those whose relationship with that government is key to their finances. Such increases in government scope are of direct financial value to a lot of people, including high-income as well as lower-income people…see my post here for discussion of this point. Increasing the scope of government also represents a tremendous ego and status benefit for many people, most definitely including Biden himself…who actually met with history professors to get ideas on how he could build up his ‘legacy’ and who, I think, is more interested in a legacy of doing Big Things than in what the benefits of those Big Things might be.
Nancy Pelosi, in reference to the ‘infrastructure’ bill, stated that: “The dollar amount, as the president has said, is zero.” This is nonsense. The fact that money for a program will come from somewhere doesn’t mean that the cost of that program is zero. If a division of a company embarks on an expensive project and gets the money from their parent corporation, that doesn’t mean that the cost of that program is zero. Same if the division get the money by raising prices and/or selling more to their existing customers–the program still costs what it costs.
The Biden/Pelosi view seems to be that the United States exists to support the Federal government and that category of people who are most closely linked to that government. Increasingly, government and the ‘extended government’ are acting like medieval robber barons, plundering the surrounding countryside to keep themselves and their retainers wealthy and powerful.
See also this post at Ricochet: Economic Illiteracy on Parade and my post The Logic of Insatiable Centralization.
The Johnstown Flood
Pennsylvania borrowed more money to build infrastructure supporting canals than any other state to take advantage of the trade opportunities of the Erie Canal. Construction started on the South Fork Dam in 1838 with scheduled completion within a year, but by the time it was finished in 1852 the railroads had made it obsolete. The state wrote it off and it eventually provided a fishing lake for Pittsburgh’s elite. When it burst in 1889, causing the Johnstown flood, the total loss in life and property was probably 100 times the initial construction cost. Pennsylvania, having long since declared bankruptcy in 1841, blamed the rich.
Most every year the Congress metaphorically dances on top of the earthen South Fork Dam looming over Johnstown with the water lapping at their feet. Their solution is always the same: Let’s throw some more dirt on top this year. We’ll drain it when we drain the swamp, after we eliminate the air pollution in Johnstown, the price paid for the industrial revolution raising American living standards in the late 1800s.
The primary issue facing America during the post WW II era was whether its consumerist economy could continue to produce rising living standards for all, the cornerstone of political legitimacy. The leader of America’s competitor Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Union put the issue crudely six decades ago: “we will bury you” with a savings and investment rate several multiples of yours. America’s intelligence community and economic elite were shocked by the sudden collapse of the Soviet economy – like a dam bursting – less than three decades later.
Khrushchev, like most of America’s development economists, understood the role of saving and investment but not how important the private capital markets were to the allocation of capital to its highest and best use, politically directed credit being the main cause of their collapse. In Johnstown everyone knew that the valves to lower the water level in the lake had been removed during the last amateurish reconstruction, but fixing or removing it was opposed by rich land owners. The debt ceiling has similarly proven an ineffective mechanism to control America’s flood of debt, with the central bank standing ready to buy it all to the benefit of the wealthy. American politicians, feeling unbound by constitutional constraints, are addicted to issuing debt, the birthing person’s milk of politics. The Biden Build Back Better Plan promises to strengthen the dam, but like the amateurish repairs to the South Fork will weaken the dam’s foundation while causing water levels to rise, possibly to a critical level.