The Return of the 1970’s

I lived through the 1970’s and their inflationary depression. It was a dismal, lousy decade. The economy was in shambles with shortages, intermittent energy “crises”, cripplingly high interest rates, and a continuing, unrelenting inflation that sapped the economy and decimated people’s savings. The government under both parties grew more powerful, intrusive, costly, aggressive, and vigorously annoying. Abroad the Cold War was raging on, and we were losing. The decade saw a failed war in Vietnam, disaster and humiliation in Iran, the rise of OPEC with unfriendly governments demanding exorbitant prices for oil they had stolen from American and British companies, the expansion of the Soviet empire into Africa and Latin America, and the relative and in some cases absolute decline of American military power versus the Soviets. For so-called leaders the nation had Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, two men who belong on any sensibly thought out list of the nation’s five or six worst presidents.

The national mood in response to all this was a sense of fear, gloom, and foreboding so deep and pervasive as probably to seem incomprehensible to someone coming of age in the 1980’s or thereafter. Shops and mail order outfits sprang up all over the country selling wheat grinders, freeze dried food, insect proof bulk storage bins, and other “survivalist” supplies. There was a brisk market for books on how to profit from an impending economic collapse and how to survive a coming worse than just economic collapse. Gun stores did very a good business in weapons and ammo. There was a huge demand for gold, silver, and various collectibles. The press was full of articles proclaiming that the American era was over and that the rising generation of boomers would have to accept a lower standard of living than their parents enjoyed. George Will wrote a column claiming that no nation had fallen as far and as fast as the United States was doing since the collapse of imperial Spain (not a completely unreasonable opinion given what was going on and that high government officials were speaking of the need to negotiate a tolerable second position for America in a Soviet-dominated world). There was talk of malaise in the nation, but that was too mild a term for what was really going on in people’s minds.

Yet we know how it all ended. We turned ourselves around. The United States won the Cold War. The early 1980’s began a quarter century of prosperity and economic progress. People were able to look back on the worries and apocalyptic talk of the 1970’s as overdone, as a strange and almost silly or quaint aberration and certainly as something that belonged in the dead past – until lately.

Now we are seeing it again - the fear,the aggressive government, the serious economic troubles, the failure and drift abroad (though nothing nearly as serious as the Cold War), the doubts about the country’s future, and even two presidents who would make fairly good stand-ins for Nixon and Carter. Once again people are stocking up on gold, silver, guns, and ammo. Once again there is money to be made selling bulk food supplies and writing books on how to survive the coming something or other. Once again, large numbers of the citizens are worried that the government is moving from mere drag and annoyance to positive threat.

It seems to be the 1970’s all over again. We woke up and worked out way out of that mess. We can only hope that we will be as good and as lucky again.

Warming's True Believers

We are now hearing from human-generated global warming’s journalistic true believers that recent blizzards are caused by global warming. Indeed for these people, whatever happens is caused by global warming, and nothing that happens or may happen can shake their faith. This is nothing new. One could substitute “angels” for “global warming” and have the same sort of all purpose explanation. After all, if angels by hypothesis can do anything, then anything that happens can be caused by them, and nothing that happens can cast doubt on the explanation. Similarly if every change in weather or climate is by hypothesis caused by global warming, then no observed facts or set of observed facts can cast doubt on that explanation.

This sort of thinking is commonplace and has been throughout history. It is not, however, scientific. There is a good reason that critics call this stuff a religion.

Rahm and Retards

I have no use for Rahm Emanuel, but in this one case I think the man is getting a bum rap. The term “retard” has two meanings. The first is as an insulting term for a mentally retarded person. The second is as a figure of speech that, like “idiot”, “moron”, and “imbecile” used in the same way, denotes a fool or buffoon. It is clear that Mr. Emanuel was using the word in the second sense, and since he was referring to some leftist members of the political class, it is probable that he was using it accurately. It would be obtuse or engaging in silly political correctness to interpret what he said as a slur on mentally handicapped people.

It is useful to remember that “retarded” was itself originally a euphemism for “feeble minded”, and that it later came into usage as an insult. We see the same natural linguistic process going on today with “challenged”. Over sensitivity about n-, r-, f- or other words can very quickly become absurd and indicative of almost totemic thinking.