Atlas Shrugged: The Mocking

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Megan's In The Cornfield Again


Megan has put on her L. L. Bean Town and Country outfit and exchanged her discount designer shoes for penny loafers, as she visits the countryside to construct some strawmen. Megan's wit consists of making sarcastic comments about people, something I ordinarily approve of quite highly. Unfortunately she makes sarcastic comments about imaginary people, which somewhat undermines the effect of her rhetorical flourishes.
[skip] Every crisis gets compared to the Great Depression. This very
nearly was.

There are strains on the left and the right that are kind of okay with this
idea.

The right wing version says "Let them fail! Fractional reserve banking is
inherently unstable, and we've been living on borrowed money. We need to
cut back to our natural, credit-free level of output and consumption."

The left wing version says "Let them fail! Capitalism is inherently
unstable; greed is no way to run an economy. We need to force banks to
stop doing all of these dangerous things and regulate them so heavily they can't
make a mistake. Also, as a general rule, rich people should suffer for
their mistakes, and ordinary people shouldn't. This is a great opportunity
to repeat FDR's awesome victories!"
The liberal smear, let's call it Fred, purports that liberals are Marxist ideologues who live in an imaginary la-la-land of communist splendor. While I'm sure it gives Megan a warm glow to imagine her critics as deeply stupid people, it's not exactly true. Fred's a strawman.
But so is the Republican crack, although in a more complimentary way. Republicans want conservative taxing and spending, not all this new-fangled innovation. That's ridiculous too, of course, as Republicans have gleefully removed safeguards called regulations to loot the American treasury for eight years, bringing us to this unfortunate point. Another strawman, Megan.
Is this the kind of analysis you really want to be known for?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is this the kind of analysis you really want to be known for?

It got her a gig at The Atlantic, didn't it?

[Insert weary rant on the vapid and horrifying state of the paid opinion press]

Susan of Texas said...

Heh!

She's Jonah Goldberg in skirts.