In an attempt to achieve political dominance and push their agenda, Republicans
create, and have become adept at perpetuating political, social and economic
myths.
Remember the infamous Swift Boating (an ad hominem attack) in the 2004 election that
challenged presidential candidate John Kerry's distinguished military record.
Even in the face of John Kerry's former crew mates testifying to the contrary,
this far-right myth was initially believed by some and gained traction with
others via repetition. The Swift Boat experience taught political operatives
the lesson of immediately refuting and vigorously countering myths or
half-truths.
More recently several Republican created myths have been debunked but linger in
the belief systems of diehard conservatives. These involve the inclusion of
death panels in the recent health care bill, or the contention that President
Obama was not born in the US and is a closet Muslim.
The GOP myth machine is in full swing today with new myths being promulgated.
The first one that pops-up on my radar screen is the mythical refutation of the
actual causes of the 2008 financial crisis. This myth is pernicious because it taints the hearts
and minds of many in the electorate and helps the GOP win elections.
N.B. If you want to know how
these myths get propagated take a look at a few of the following Youtube
videos. They are devious in their selective editing and thus are the
personification of propaganda -" half truths:
Blaming it on Fannie and Freddie, and of course Barney Frank:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs.
Or http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM&NR=1
Or this video blaming it on a black Senator- Barack Obama:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usvG-s_Ssb0&feature=related
Or "How the Democrats caused the financial crisis" Let's blame it on ACORN (
and Barack Obama) who send representatives to bankers homes scaring them and
their kids into making bad home loans -" I am not making this up folks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr1M1T2Y314&feature=related)
Recently I made a mistake and I am man enough to admit it. Although my last
mistake was in 1984, I apparently did not learn my lesson sufficiently. After
many moons of life its own-self and a bit of higher education, I actually tried
to reason with an ultra conservative, Limbaugh/Beck worshiping, anger-fueled
tea party follower.
He was an acquaintance from my Silicone Valley days and we met because our
kids were in the same class. We had lost touch until recently. He is an
educated guy, an engineer, angry that the world hasn't treated him better. I
picture him nightly shaking his fist at the heavens. Things turned to politics
when he started sending me right-wing propaganda articles.
According to him the GOP are always right. George the Second inherited an
economy that was already markedly trending downward and thus was not
responsible for turning a surplus into a multi-trillion dollar deficit. He
completely ignored my assertions that Bush squandered this surplus. "Where did
you hear that?" he retorted. He simply choose to ignored the fact that the Bush
instituted unfunded tax cuts (which added not one job to the economy), the
spending of trillions of dollars on two wars (firing both the head of his
Council of Economic Advisors and the Army Chief of Staff when they dared to say
publicly that his estimates of the costs were ludicrously low) and the trillion
dollar unfunded Medicare prescription plan, were primary causes of the economic
downturn.
This became the mode of his responses -" dismiss with a rhetorical wave of his
hand all the facts that were distasteful or inimical to his world view and
denigrate my sources as left-wing propaganda. In his last email to me he did
say, offhandedly, that the Bush administration and Republican congress did not
watch the federal spending as carefully as they should have.
Our correspondence started off quite mildly but heated up as I challenged him
on a number of his assertions based upon the extant myths. The last go-around
was in response to my assertion that the two primary causes of the financial
credit crisis were unwarranted speculation by the banks on credit derivatives
(especially securitized sub-prime mortgage tranches) and the relaxation of
federal watchdog regulations on these entities (such as the repeal of the
Glass-Steagall act) initiated by the GOP.
Myth One
Starting in 1994,
when the GOP took back Congress for the first time in many decades, the Republican
belief in unfettered free markets spilled over from international trade to the realm of
business regulation and on into the world of banking and finance. The GOP when reminded of the excesses that led to the Great Depression countered with the oft repeated mantra, "If
they have skin in the game the bankers will not do anything to diminish their
own assets." The GOP, to deflect the worrywarts on the other side of the aisle
who vehemently opposed regulatory slackening, used this phrase both offensively
and defensively.
Thus the inexorable push to repeal financial regulatory legislation with many
acts going back to the Great Depression. Along with the legislative regulatory
repeal of such firewalls as the Glass-Steagall Act, the political philosophy of
government getting in the way of economic growth, resulted in the diminution,
weakening (via the appointment of conservative regulators), or, at the very
minimum, the bullying of the financial regulatory agencies through repeated
hearings and an onslaught of letters and other missives from GOP legislators.
The three "des" as Bill Black said. Deregulation, desupervision, and de facto decriminalization created the environment that drove the modern U.S. financial crises. These three factors were essential to create the epidemics of accounting control fraud that hyper-inflated the bubble that triggered the Great Recession.
Well, our much-vaunted and now minimally regulated bankers badly skinned their knees at best, and in many cases placed their entire enterprise at risk. When the magnitude of the credit crisis was fully understood, late in 2008, a bailout scheme was formulated. The incoming Obama administration had no choice but to put all other business aside, kiss the hurt, dry the tears, pass the TARP, give these miscreants a stern talking to - and then send them back to their school yard games.
The last straw came when my acquaintance refused to accept the facts, and
repeated the Charles Krauthammer initiated myth that it was Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac that caused the financial credit crisis with their unfettered
lending to the credit unworthy. Let me share with you a small part of his
diatribe:
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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