{"id":3657,"date":"2011-07-19T15:54:35","date_gmt":"2011-07-19T19:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/?p=3657"},"modified":"2011-07-19T15:54:35","modified_gmt":"2011-07-19T19:54:35","slug":"if-the-economy-tanks-will-conservatives-repent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2011\/07\/if-the-economy-tanks-will-conservatives-repent.html","title":{"rendered":"If the economy tanks, will Conservatives repent?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Debt<\/a>
The scariest debt-ceiling poll results, ever<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The debt ceiling talks appear to have stalled and the August 2nd date of economic doom draws neigh.\u00a0 Wall Street bankers, The Fed, the Treasury Department, and most every economist on the planet believe that hitting the debt ceiling will have dire consequences<\/a>, and that actually defaulting on the debt would be even worse<\/a>.\u00a0 Estimates vary in terms of the degree of catastrophe, but virtually no one in a position to be considered an expert on macroeconomics thinks that hitting the ceiling will be no big deal.<\/p>\n

In that light, the poll results depicted here<\/a> are truly frightening.\u00a0 53% of Republicans, 43% of Independents, and even over a quarter of Democrats believe hitting the ceiling won’t cause a crisis.\u00a0 Further, somewhere around 60 Congressmen have vowed to vote against any debt ceiling increase<\/a>, no matter the deal.\u00a0 Clearly they aren’t worried either.<\/p>\n

Chauncey DeVega, over at AlterNet<\/a>, thinks the reason is that evangelicals have a strong hold on the GOP, and that the fervently faithful have a mindset that ignores numbers that don’t agree with their ideology.\u00a0 He posits that the Tea Party and other far right conservative groups are running on faith rather than fact.\u00a0 While there may be some truth to that, it doesn’t explain the plurality of Independents or the chunk of Democrats beholden to the notion that banging into the debt ceiling is a non-event.<\/p>\n

I personally think there’s also an element here of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”.\u00a0 Political issues have become so hyperbolic in the media that virtually every issue is positioned as a looming Armageddon of one sort or another.\u00a0 Unless you’re following the minutiae of the debates, you’re bound to get pretty numb to all the doomsaying.<\/p>\n

However, presumably our elected officials are above simply blowing in the media wind.\u00a0 They have access to data and discussions those of us in the cheap seats do not.\u00a0\u00a0 They are in the position to be able to discern hyperbole from actual danger.\u00a0 Yet this would not prevent them from being blinded to facts by faith.<\/p>\n

GOP legislators faith-blindness goes beyond the debt ceiling.\u00a0 Similar faith-trumps-data rationale fuels denial of global warming, belief that tax cuts don’t have to be paid for, belief that progressive tax codes constitute class warfare and destroy jobs, belief that trickle down economics is always the answer, and government regulation is always evil.<\/p>\n

The problem is that proving that tax cuts actually lower revenue, or that CO2 contributes to global warming, requires many years of data.\u00a0 And even then,the results are subject to interpretation and are not readily understandable by the average Joe.<\/p>\n

Should we hit it, the debt ceiling presents an interesting test case.\u00a0 If the experts are right, the impact will be felt in the very short term.\u00a0 It will be widespread, affecting almost everyone, everywhere.\u00a0 And the impact will be felt for awhile.\u00a0 It will be virtually impossible to deny that such an impact was directly attributable to ignoring the debt ceiling.\u00a0 The Conservatives who claimed it would be no big deal will be demonstrably and painfully proved wrong beyond any reasonable doubt.<\/p>\n

Should that come to pass, the question is, will that shake the faith of Conservative politicians and supporters in their other sacred tenets?\u00a0 Might they be willing to entertain the reality of global warming given the catastrophic impact of their blind faith in the debt ceiling non-crisis?\u00a0 Or will this be swept under the rug much like the predicted May 21st end of the world predictions<\/a>.\u00a0 That was also proved wrong, but the faithful seem to somehow have accepted that failure with no apparent impact on their other beliefs.\u00a0 Maybe a sufficiently strong faith is even able to overcome incontrovertible reality.<\/p>\n

Either way, if the economy tanks, it should certainly cause the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” crowd to pay attention.\u00a0 Maybe that bodes well for our collective political future if we can at least get the majority of the voters to begin operating from data-based rather than faith-based policies.\u00a0 Although, it would be a hellish way to learn a lesson.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If they’re wrong about the debt ceiling will that shake their belief in the evil of taxes and regulation, discounting of global warming, the universality of trickle down economics and capitalism, and other faith-based fact-defiant policy positions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[50,76,21,43,117,42,40,22,85,41,15],"class_list":["post-3657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-boehner","tag-christians","tag-conservatives","tag-economic-policy","tag-fear-mongering","tag-global-warming","tag-gop","tag-political-ideology","tag-religious-right","tag-republicans","tag-tea-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3657"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3666,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3657\/revisions\/3666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}