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well, this is basically a philosophical problem--whether (a) you accept that there is in fact a global economic crisis
then (b) whether you connect that crisis to various elements of neoliberal/american conservative economic thinking
then (c) if you do make that connection, it follows that there is a PROBLEM with appealing to that economic thinking for remedies to the situation that thinking was instrumental in creating.
then there's a second matter: neoliberalism/american conservative economic thought is a PARTICULAR IDEOLOGY--so it's a particular theory about the economy, what the important relations are, how they interact.
if you see the obama administration as moving into a keynesian mode--which in many ways it is---what that means is there is a frame switch--so the state spending is NOT understood in the same way as it is for neoliberals. you could say that in a keynesian-type system the state acts to support and increase the amount of economic activity and uses tax resources (amongst others) to effect that--the idea then would be that the system in its aggregate movement would generate more revenues over time so that the debt acquired at one point would be resolved through the effects of state action.
this means that the entire conservative way of thinking about taxation, state spending, effects---and the relation of state spending at one point to any future point--is worthless for trying to parse what the obama administration is doing.
it seems to me that this is *the* problem that the right cannot get it's head around--and it explains to a significant extent why it cannot articulate anything like a coherent oppositional position that goes beyond "this freaks me out"
which is all the tea parties were saying.
another way--events have outstripped conservative economic thinking. one of the features shared across conservative positions is an unwillingness to relativize their own positions---that's why you get all these appeals to timeless values, the machinery of the economy blah blah blah.
they now confront a situation that by its own workings relativizes their position.
the right can't handle it.
you see it here.
but this is, at bottom, a philosophical question--that is political at its deeper sense---not a matter of actions following a sequence, but of the logic that shapes sequence. how do we debate this kind of dissonance if one crew is unwilling to accept the situation that the other assumes they're already in?
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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