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Half Full or Half Empty? [1]
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Date: 2023-01-10
Red state spring
Paul Krugman's column in NYT today got me to thinking about the comments I see in my local Next Door neighbor chat. Krugman says that the election deniers are often economy deniers as well, insisting that the economy is a mess when actually inflation is going down and the predicted recession hasn't happened.The Republican House is focusing its attention on a financial crisis that doesn't actually exist.
I don't know much about economy but I know a few things about my red state neighbors. In the neighborhood chat, between lost dogs and bunk beds for sale, people talk about things that concern them: graffiti on a fence, speeding cars where kids play, strangers on the doorstep, a cluster of police cars, kids stealing lawn Santas. Someone asks, “Does anyone know about this?” Has anyone ever seen this black truck, that guy at the door, those kids running away? Does anyone know why the police came?
But there's always a few who insist that it all goes to show you how life has gone to hell ever since January 2020, which takes me back to Krugman's point. There were graffiti decked fences, door to door salesmen, speeders, and bratty kids in Trump's time, no less nor more than now, but some folks look at the disaster today and pine for the good old Trump days.
Not a lot actually changed here in January 2020. Few actions that a president can take will make an immediate change in people's daily lives. Biden made one: financial support checks to American families to help tide them over covid. But Trump also sent checks. In Trump's time unemployment hit historic highs (boo!) and in Biden's time that turned around (yay!), but in Biden's time inflation jumped higher than in decades, raising gas and grocery prices, and then it turned around again.
While I despise Trump as much as the next Democrat, to be fair, it was covid and not Trump that chased people out of the workplace. It was a bunch of causes beyond Biden's control that ran up inflation: covid-related supply chain issues, OPEC decisions, and underpaid people returning to work and demanding fair wages at last, for example. Some of those things began in Trump's time anyway. Both presidents tried to address their issues. Of course, I think Biden has been much smarter about that but neither turned our Titanic nation on a dime. Presidents make what course corrections are within their constitutional power. They don't make world events or economic weather.
But people looked out at their lives in January 2020, many seem to have been shocked to see that the glass had suddenly become half empty when before “the steal” it was half full. Around here the alarm went to the point of some of them recommending the immediate purchase of ammo to defend against liberals who have not actually been seen roaming the streets taking away people's wives-n-kids or prying anything from hands warm or cold. Of course, not everyone feels that way but voter polls indicate that remarkably many people vote as if they do.
Fox News, Alex Jones and other descendants of Rush Limbaugh, and the social media echo chamber are doing an excellent job of developing a remarkable perception of change in people’s daily lives based on almost no factual evidence. What can Democrats do, not just to improve government, but to change people’s emotional perceptions of it as effectively as, say, QAnon?
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