Op-Ed: The hypocritical hyperbola - The Add a Penguin approach to crisis

Anyone could be forgiven for thinking a rational political debate was happening in America. The arguments aren’t written in crayon, (well, mostly) and nobody’s being told to sit in the corner. They must be adults.

The fact that there’s almost no substance in the “debate” isn’t mentioned. That the noisy vacuum trying to pass itself off as political savvy is achieving a grand total of squat isn’t being noticeably examined, either. Since October 2008, the United States (…of America, you remember, big place, used to have healthy literate people who lived in buildings? That’s the one.) has faced imminent catastrophic financial collapse, a totally dysfunctional market economy, two wars, a post nuclear housing sector, credit catatonia, massive increases in unemployment, and the shredding of global trade. Private capital alone is estimated to have lost a flippant $31 trillion, and that’s a figure which appears to be based on known, identifiable losses. These whimsical events have cost, at a rough guesstimate, the equivalent of ten World War Twos. The difference so far is that the United States won in World War Two, and didn’t have tens of millions of economic casualties staggering around for years afterwards. 10% of the population weren’t living on food stamps and spending their days trying to find someone who knows what’s happening about their welfare entitlements. Political science, which has never been too concerned about life on Earth or anywhere else, has managed to find a way of ignoring facts on the basis of principles. It’s based on the “Add A Penguin” approach. Meaning introduce new elements into any topic, however irrelevant. In this case the penguin is a political statement, not that there’s much difference between an irrelevant flightless bird living in a vanishing world and most political statements. Issues are created where there weren’t issues. The most banal, futile, utterly meaningless, statement can be turned into political copy, at the blink/twitch of a publicist. The nation’s media rush out and publish in their normal sycophantic servile frenzy, and all is well in Toytown. This is perfectly normal. Thousands of media people would be thrown out of work, if this process stopped. Their smiling rodent-like faces would be out in the shopping malls, if this vital public service was discontinued. Public hygiene alone demands that it continues. It’s the hypocritical hyperbola that’s the problem. The hypocrisy of the past returns as the ideology of the present. It’s surprisingly consistent. The irrational, largely illiterate, Free Market ideology of the remote past now becomes the idealistic portrayal of democratic opposition to damn near anything. The hypocritical hyperbola is purely facile. That’s why it operates so well in political media. Firing a barrage of penguins at anyone and anything is almost the sole purpose of political statements, since Herodotus. We have so far so many penguins, and so little substance: The revenue system is permanently on the fritz until someone does finally pay some taxes. The hypocritical hyperbola is now talking principles and socialism, regardless of the fact that everybody in the country is now lapping up tax dollars. One way of dealing with taxes and Marxism is explained by the Right Side News: Secession, by taxpayers. The history of how the United States’ current fiscal ten World Wars happened is now strictly verboten, as a topic. Even the President apparently isn’t allowed to mention it, because the hypocritical hyperbola is currently running issues based on the minutiae of earlier speeches. Rising above partisan politics now means “Don’t talk about the war”. You can have a few hundred massive domestic crises, but not a history of them. The economic crisis itself is now a popularity contest. Damn the torpedoes, where’s the column space? Anyone would think that you could pick the economic disaster you liked, and use that as a policy statement, judging from this Bloomberg article. If, perchance, this sounds like a large part of American political debate is based entirely on penguins, it is. If you start a conversation with the word “red”, you color that conversation. If you operate your media by starting off topic, it makes it that much harder to get back to the real topics. In fact, you can avoid the history of the recession, the revenue issue, and any requirement to prove understanding of the issues, based entirely on adding the right penguins to your media releases. The trouble is that to beat the hypocritical hyperbola, and its deadening of awareness of real issues, you need to identify the penguins properly. Is the recession a theory? Are taxes really a metaphysical concept? Does anyone give a damn how popular the Rep from Muskogee is? New York Times columnist David Brooks made several points recently with his piece “Taking the Depression seriously”. Among other things, he made the point that substance and realism are what’s needed in this tornado of disasters which have crippled the American economy. Even political science has to have some relevance to something, surely, even if it’s only accidental, or it needs to prove it can read for a drivers license or something. It’s either that, or get overrun with penguins.