Jefferson on democracy

"Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give it to those who will not."  Quote by Thomas Jefferson

On constraints

Quote from Burnt Offerings..."a lack of constraints is the reason power corrupts."

Deficit Spending and WWII

In my most recent blog, I briefly described our four year recession as a copy of FDR’s twelve year New Deal that was misdesigned to fix the great depression.  After twelve years it resulted in World War II: a development associated with the void and chaos of a depressed Europe and America.  This blog is an extension of that article.  It attempts to further explain those developments in the mid-twentieth century from a social-psychological perspective rather than an economic one.  It is my belief that if Americans have not learned from history we are destined to repeat it. 

The point is this; it was not deficit spending and the new deal that got us out of the great depression.  It was the forced implementation of the war years that provided the structure and the obsessive qualities that were necessary to end that cultural depression.  These economic bubbles that you hear so much about from economists are the symptoms of an underlying manic quality that allows people to think risk taking under questionable conditions is acceptable.  The economic bubble is part of an underlying cultural manic state.  The problem is psychological stupid: not economic.  

If I am right, then the economic path we are pursuing is likely to result in a real and on-going fiscal crisis or a war.  The reason is that we have not learned our lesson yet from the past.  This cultural problem is much bigger than just the field of economics.  This topic, Obama’s New Deal, is a major topic of the new book that I am writing. 

Obama's New Deal

The last year and the recent presidential election scare the hell out of me.  I am a clinical psychologist/author who thinks something really crazy is occurring in America.  It is something akin to a cultural delusion.  It appears that a majority of Americans are attempting to escape the unpleasantness of reality by ignoring the obvious problem at hand.  That problem is the steadily growing lack of fiscal and moral responsibility that is exemplified by our current president and those who are on his side. 

Many people I know are avoiding the obvious by arguing that the current president and his administration have done a partially good job and will complete what has been started in his next administration.  Some Americans accept this point of view without question.  Most refuse to look at all.  

In order to understand what has happened, people need to understand that in the first two years of President Obama’s presidency, he and his congress tried to copy FDR’s New Deal that was supposed to fix the great depression.  Obama and his cohorts did a very poor job of it with their greedy stimulus package and lack of transparency.  They were obviously dishonest. 

Obama took the same course as the New Deal of the 1930’s that lasted for about twelve years.  The reasons it lasted so long are clearly described in two books: one called The Forgotten Man and another called FDR’s Folly. History has been kind to Roosevelt in the thirties and only now, many years later, has it become known that the great depression was extended for many years because of FDR’s policies of bigger government, political favoritism coupled with a patronage system and outright dishonesty.  There was even another depression of almost the same intensity in the late thirties that was not covered by the media.

The Obama administration has pursued those same new deal policies and the result has been a recession that has lasted 4 years to date.  Most recessions/depressions end much quicker than that. Only FDR’s New Deal lasted longer and it resulted in war.  If Obama is re-elected he will pursue those same failed policies. The result clearly will be an extended recession/depression with the real possibility of another crash.  Obama and his cohorts have not learned from history.  Remember it was John Maynard Keynes who said, “madmen in authority distil their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”

The Valley of the Blind

"In the valley of the Blind the sighted are cripples"  From Burnt Offerings

America in Crisis

It has finally happened!  Our dedication to the average person has finally failed us.  In my book, Burnt Offerings (2008), it was clear that our country was headed into chaos and would be vulnerable to authoritarianism.  I have thought for years that all this permissiveness and tearing apart of anything traditional must come to an end.  Western civilization itself is in crisis as dependency takes precedence over more anxiousness.  The idea of independence, and hence freedom, have been given up as we chose dependence in the form of corrupt government.  Statistical data bear this out when we see that about 59 % of our population is now mentally ill.

According to my book, Burnt Offerings, the National Institute of Mental Health (2007) estimates that there are about 95 million untreated users of mental health services annually.  This figure combined with the ninety million annually who do receive treatment suggests that a large segment of our population is in need of treatment.  That is about 59% of our population.  It is my thought that mentally ill people would be much more likely to vote for dependence than for the independence that comes with earning what you have.

government decline

"Life is on the decline because government has become incapable of dealing with modern social problems."  From the book Burnt Offerings.