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Obamaism is Statism

Out of some strange curiosity I decided to peruse The New Yorker, probably because it is supposed to be a source of good artistic criticism, cultural-political commentary, and humor. One of the first things that caught my eye was "Obamaism" by George Packer. It is supposed to be a commentary on what, if anything, Obama’s "philosophy" is and how we can distill it and label it based on the first ten weeks of his presidency. I expected to find good blagging fodder in it, and I was not disappointed. Packer says,

Well short of Obama’s first hundred days, the dominant characteristic of his Presidency is clear: activist government, on every front. It’s harder to make out the contours of the philosophy at the core of this dazzling blur of action. Given the early and ample track record, there’s surprisingly little agreement over the nature of Obamaism.

There is among libertarians. He is a Statolatrist in the extreme, dominated by envious class warfare on the one hand and unadulterated Keynes-Krugmanism on the other.

Obama’s signature projects defy grouping under a single heading, and, as a result, he has been criticized for inconsistency.

Corporate-State socialism. Or economic fascism. Okay, that’s two headings, but they mean about the same thing. (If only "inconsistent" socliasm were his problem! That was the problem we had with the Bushies, and that was bad enough!)

What underlies so many of Obama’s decisions is an attachment to the institutions that hold up American society, a desire to make them function better rather than remake them altogether.

No critique of the notion that Obama or any other president should feel the need or have the power to either make "American institutions" function better or remake them altogether—oh, no, don’t question the very basis of the awesome power of the unitary executive.

Allowing the auto industry to die would create social havoc in communities around the country, and anything less than de-facto government control seems inadequate.

I don’t understand the American public’s inability to understand this. First of all, allowing unprofitable companies to lose money and be bought out, change their niche in the world, or make room for competitors would not result in the death of the auto industry. The increased profit motive, heightened susceptibility to competition, and necessary re-focusing on foreign over domestic sales would make the American auto industry stronger, as anyone who thought about it longer than was required for a knee-jerk patriotic-socialist reaction knows. Second, not allowing those things to happen to the automotive and other industries is precisely what has created the economic havoc we witness in the world slowly deteriorating around us. Companies must make profit to survive, hire workers, and improve their products over time, and for an economy to be healthy it must slough off the unprofitable endeavors to allow for those resources to be allocated in more desired (more profitable) ways. Just because something exists (is an "American institution") doesn’t mean it must continue to, and the longer the re-allocation of money, labor, and equipment is delayed, the more resources will have been wasted and the more difficult it will be for workers, managers, and entrepreneurs to find the most profitable enterprises.

As we can see and as pro-auto-bailout (or pro-de-facto-government-control) commentators are so quick to point out, failure of the automotive industry would create a domino effect of failure throughout the economy, so this "havoc" from unprofitability would not be confined to one or a few industries. On this they are right. But the auto industry is already failing. The unprofitability of thousands of companies is already wreaking economic havoc around the world. Unprofitability is our biggest enemy outside of the State, so to restore order and sustainability to our economy, we must allow unprofitable allocations of resources to fade away and profitable ones to take their place. Prevention of this punishment of unprofitability, to say nothing of a substantial level of direct control by the government, retards or outright prevents this economic calculation from taking place. But I wouldn’t expect that level of thought and analysis to appear in a rinky-dink magazine like The New Yorker. After all, Obama is the Savior of America, so let’s get back to praising Him and demonizing the conservatives who are virtually indistinguishable from Him and His cronies:

Obama may not see a similar need to put the government in charge of the big banks, but he has also shown that he has no taste for such a disruption of the system—even if it were politically possible, and perhaps even if it were the most direct route back to financial health.

Obviously you are not paying attention. This is exactly what "the system" is! Protect the rich and powerful and screw the little guy. This "egalitarian" Obama is debasing the dollar for the benefit of Wall Street millionaires and continuing the corporate-State socialist swindle of privatizing profits and socializing losses. He and his subordinates do not hide this. I don’t know what purpose the clause "even if it [nationalizing the banks] were the most direct route back to financial health" serves if not to suggest the possibility that it is. To type that into a sentence is to display its utter absurdity. No further refutation is (should be) necessary.

Obama seems to recognize that nothing has shredded the civic fabric in recent years more than the harsh inequalities of finance capitalism and the market ideology of a generation of American politics.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines capitalism (among other, similar definitions) as, "An economic and political system characterized by a free market for goods and services and private control of production and consumption." The Treasury Department and its central bank control the money supply and have outlawed freely competing currencies. The SEC and FTC (purport to) govern and regulate trading on financial markets and the conduction of business under their jurisdiction. The central bank’s manipulation of interest rates below where the free market obviously would have placed them led directly to sub-prime mortgage stupidity and hyper-leveraging of mortgage-backed securities. The Community Reinvestment Act played no small role in widespread mortgage defaults. The Imperial Federal Government’s explicit guarantee of mortgage loans purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (government-created and -sponsored enterprises) also permitted undue risks to be taken. The Internal Revenue Service takes a goddamned quarter or more of most people’s earnings and tells them it’s for their own good! Did I mention the currency is totally and completely controlled by the State, with literally no input of any kind from the free market? What free ownership and exchange of goods and services are you talking about? What "market ideology" are you confusing with our thoroughly socialist boobocracy? Do you even know what interest rates are for or what inflation means?

But modern conservatism has grown into exactly the opposite of its origins, in Burke’s respect for tradition and Madison’s promotion of countervailing checks on concentrations of power. Instead, like any revolutionary creed, it is abstract, hard-edged, and indifferent to experience and existing conditions.

That sounds exactly like left-liberalism. They both became Statism, as Mises, Rand, and Rothbard predicted. It became increasingly clear at this point that George Packer never had a point or had lost the ability to make one, so he resorted to bashing the Republicans, which any idiot with a keyboard can do by random accident, they’re such an easy target.

Most of the remaining congressional Republicans seem content to adhere to this creed, and to allow banks, car companies, and homeowners to be crushed under the invisible foot of the market—all that matters is the consistent application of principle.

Congratulations: you’re the first person ever to accuse neocons of being principled or consistent.

Last week, the House Republicans released a shadow budget that would repeal much of the stimulus package and impose a domestic-spending freeze in the middle of what some economists are beginning to call a depression. While claiming to be fiscally responsible, it would also create new optional tax brackets and cut or eliminate taxes of every kind, from capital gains to the estate and alternative minimum taxes, tilting the benefits sharply toward—you guessed it—the wealthy.

Maybe the wealthy would get the tax cuts because they’re the ones who pay the most taxes! A government-spending freeze in the middle of what some economists are calling (and what libertarians have been calling) a depression would be a godsend. To even insinuate that curtailing government spending would be harmful is the epitome of Statolatrist ignorance and destructive barbarism, bordering on Krugman-like stupidity.

After quoting some doom-and-gloom selections from conservatives about fascism and tyranny and 1984 coming to our lives, Packer concludes:

This is what the historian Richard Hofstadter has called “the paranoid style in American politics.” In the world of intelligence, it’s known as mirror-imaging: in this case, seeing in an enemy’s mental structure a reflection of one’s own feverish simplifications. Conservatives will not be able to understand the elusive nature of Obamaism and counter its formidable appeal until they remove the impediment of their own insular, rigid ideology.

Again, I am simply constitutionally incapable of understanding the complete and utter self-blinding exhibited by liberal Democrats: you are championing in Obama exactly what you would have demonized—and did, in fact, demonize for eight years!—in his Republican counterparts. If John McCain were president and had replicated Obama in every single, last policy proposal and official position and bill signed, liberal Democrats would vilify him as a fascist and a corporatist with every self-righteous breath and every furious keystroke.

The ideology of the Republicans is identical to that of the Democrats: gain and maintain political power. The only relevant group with a “rigid ideology” is the libertarians, whose radical ideas of peace, private property rights, individual sovereignty, sound money, and free exchange put us in the unique position of being able to understand and criticize Obama’s actions that directly clash with every one of those ideals. We understand the (not so) “elusive nature of Obamaism” just fine—a hell of a lot better than his apologetic idolaters: Enrich the powerful and well-connected at the expense of everyone else, and grow the State at every possible turn. This is Obamaism and unbiased observers with an interest in liberty saw it four years ago. It’s no different from Statism of any other stripe from any other time in our history.

Posted in Democracy, Economics, Obama failures, Philosophy, Power elite, Socialism, Statolatry, Stupid