As I read this string’s headline, it struck me that a wholesale change in sentiment has taken place in America. The reasonable majority in the middle (that 60% of dutiful citizens who usually remain dispassionate...fight our wars, run our systems and companies, pay the bulk of our taxes); have gone from skeptical about market manipulation, government statements, veracity of politicians’ claims to downright universal scoffing and incredulity.
It also struck me that the process over these frighteningly fast eighteen months reminds me of a treatise I read on Paris in the days leading up to the French Revolution. It appeared that the public just lost all belief in the actions or interest of the crown. There was a wholesale collapse of credibility which emboldened the people. I now believe we are entering or are in that period here and it’s a pretty scarey moment of realization.
How long it lasts or how rough it gets remains to be seen but when it happened in France, when they crossed the Rubicam in the mind of the body politic, things accelerated at an alarming rate. To quote that old Hollywood film, “Hang on to your seats gentlemen, we are in for a bumpy night.”
When you’re standing in six inches of water in your living room, then a foot, then two feet, all the time hearing the weather man saying it is GOOD that the flooding is subsiding or not as serious as expected, I basically start doing this:
I listen to the weather man for comic relief and, at a very core level, have no respect for the words or opinion of the weather man.
I stopped taking the MSM seriously regarding this issue well over a year ago. I saw this GDP headline on my.Yahoo and immediately started chuckling.
I get the same feeling