PrintMarch 21, 2009
An About Face on Fear
At a recent forum, when referring to the present tsunami of national economic fear, Lawrence Summers, the president's director of the National Economic Council said, "Fear begets fear."
His comment had a very biblical ring to it,
His comment had a very biblical ring to it,
"Faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things unseen" (Hebrews 11:1).
In a similar context, Summers' words might read, "Fear is the substance of things feared." Fear wreaks negativity in the same way as faith contributes to the positive. Summers' fiscal premise being, fear begetting fear is exacerbating our economic problems.
What is the genesis of this public panic? Summers opined,
"It is this transition from an excess of greed to an excess of fear that President Roosevelt had in mind when he famously observed that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself...It is this transition that has happened in the United States today."
Mr. Summers fails to acknowledge the fear spiral was initiated with a specific goal. Now that it's spinning out of control, the game plan is to transfer blame onto the victims in order to remove the culpability from its principal perpetrators.
When the Democratic Party realized that it couldn't win the election based on a failed war in Iraq, a new crisis needed to be coaxed for political expediency. A disappointed New York Times could no longer highlight torture or show body bags being unloaded from military cargo planes. The Democrats found themselves in a perplexing position. They had to craft another urgent issue and insist that the nation wouldn't survive without a Democratic President for deliverance
Last May, when the drum beat commenced the Dow Jones Industrial average was 13,000. The liberals in Congress, the Democratic presidential candidates, and their cohorts in the media continued the dirge and with each beat of the drum the market declined until it had lost nearly 6,000 points. Mission accomplished!
The other week, Paul Volcker said, "The global economy may be deteriorating even faster than it did during the Great Depression." This is months after the President hammered home the dire economic "crisis" he said from which we "might never recover". People started padding their shoes with cardboard and foraging for stainless steel cups to take to the breadline. We were on the precipice of a "catastrophe" and would go over the cliff if Obama's economic recovery plan wasn't passed with mindless, rapid-fire expediency, which it was.
During the first two months of this fear mongering Presidency, pessimism was all we were fed in every news cycle and headline. You have to ponder if this calamity wasn't specifically designed by the present Administration as a means of availing the potential political benefits of "crisis"?
Could this have been a pre-mediated plan? Was it a vehicle to force-feed left- wing proposals at hasty -speed down the throats of an entire nation gasping for breath between mouthfuls? We were being stuffed to bursting with liberal policy initiatives.
In an effort to harness and establish a socialistic, government run Utopia, wasn't Obama the cowboy who rode a bucking economy, like a bronco whose "fits and starts" he now expects us to believe he didn't pay attention to? Obama was principal in accelerating the engine of "fear" to his own advantage. Now that the vehicle he's been driving is careening out of control and heading over-a-cliff, he's entertaining second thoughts.
In an effort to stem the tide, Obama waxed a tad smarmy and took umbrage to his recent decline in the polls by saying,
"A smidgen of good news and suddenly everything is doing great. A little bit of bad news and ooohh, we're down on the dump...and...I am the object in chief of this varying assessment. "
Time for the newly elected Executive to change tactics before the nation regurgitates all over his Hart Schaffner and Marx tuxedo. The two choices either shift the blame or make light of the situation he invested years trumping-up.
Obama's obvious attempt is to side-step a dry-heaving nation responding and looking like its preparing to purge. It appears as if he and his economic team decided to disconnect the feeding tube, switching-up disguises for a Ronnie Reagan pretense and changing the tenor from "cataclysmic" to upbeat, optimistic and hopeful. The Narcissist-in-Chief must be sensing that the economic outcome may hinge on his optimism or lack thereof and that he may ultimately bear the blame if it all goes south.
On Inauguration Day this President engaged this nation in a game of fiscal tennis. He had his racquet's nylon restrung to benefit his score. The only problem is that he served us an economic hand grenade instead of a tennis ball. When the grenade flew over the net, Americans scattered, clearing the court. Now, he's standing there alone in the middle of the clay in his white, Sergio Tacchini tennis shorts saying, "Hey, where did everybody go? ...the national crisis isn't as bad as we thought."
Sorry Mr. President, it doesn't work that way. Your unswerving rhetoric injected an overdose of fear deep into the life blood of this nation giving palpable substance to the fears you were profoundly involved in cultivating for your own political gain. The only remedy to the economic problem you've created is to do an about-face on fear and once again exercise faith, not in government but in the strength of the American people.
