What is Important is too Easily Obscured

Or How You Can Spin Out While Trying to Turn the Corner

Lying, without qualms about any repercussions, is a real art form today. Of course we call it spin but my mother and her whole generation were not so easy to fool. They knew a lie when they heard one. They heard, “Prosperity is just around the corner,” from Herbert Hoover, the George W Bush of their time. Now, according to some Nouveau Right economists, Hoover was a sadly misunderstood genius.

F.D.R. made all of the mistakes that made the last depression last so long. And, and, and-yellow-will-turn-brown if-you-look-at-it-long-enough. Now unless you are talking about the head of a dandelion aging in the field that is not true. Even then it usually turns white unless you kill it with toxic spray. Nor is the idea that F.D.R. made the depression worse true. A lie is even harder to kill than a dandelion.

We never see dandelions anymore unless we live next door to feckless neighbors. A lot of my youth was spent picking dandelions, or maybe it just seemed like a lot at the time. My Uncle made Dandelion Wine for several years running. I don't have his recipe, nor did I ever taste the wine, I just picked the dandelions. My uncle believed in a proper division of labor. I did get a bottle of Orange Crush for my trouble though.

Since so much of the subjective truth in the world depends on something called a point of view maybe we ought to try for a little more objectivity. I know that runs against the way we do things today. It will need to be one of our major changes before we return to a sustainable social and economic model.

An objective view of the common dandelion leads us to the fact that it is an uncommonly useful and beautiful plant. We ate the greens in the spring before the flowers appeared. They were slightly bitter and astringent, but with butter they were delicious. They were also full of Vitamin C and minerals and other good things like fiber. Now we kill them at great cost to our environment and to our appreciation of the beauties of spring.

It is easy to tell a partial truth about past events that few people alive can remember. If you were an adult in 1933 you are over 90 now. Most people were adults at 15 in those days. They also had learned to revere the truth after a series of lies had led to a national downfall we now call the Great Depression.

It is quite likely that our new Atlas, President Obama, will fail to lift the weight we have heaped on him. The mass of uncommon debt coupled with bad choices are heavy enough to crush anyone.

In trying to create more wealth by the use of derivatives we made a very bad choice. We tried to create value by multiplying the number of times we sell pieces of paper associated with assets that have a finite value. By doing so we drove the prices of those assets far too high to be sustainable. No one man could clean that up without a common agreement on how to accomplish the task and a lot of help.