Inflation Debases the Currency Soul
Dalrymple stuns me again. Well, he didn't actually stun me, but he has taken a timely and mundane topic--inflation--and given it a cultural and spiritual angle. Great stuff. This is one of the best lines: "During those fat years, a man could sit at home watching television and imagine that he was growing richer thereby." Use your house as an ATM, do nothing and get rich. Hard work is for suckers . . . unless you're using your salary to leverage yourself deeper.
The best stuff comes at the end: Two excerpts:
But asset inflation–ultimately, the debasement of the currency–as the principal source of wealth corrodes the character of people. It not only undermines the traditional bourgeois virtues but makes them ridiculous and even reverses them. Prudence becomes imprudence, thrift becomes improvidence, sobriety becomes mean-spiritedness, modesty becomes lack of ambition, self-control becomes betrayal of the inner self, patience becomes lack of foresight, steadiness becomes inflexibility: all that was wisdom becomes foolishness. And circumstances force almost everyone to join in the dance. . . .
Inflation is not a bogey for everyone–not for those who wish to restructure society, for example, or for those who want government control of ever more aspects of people's lives. But for the rest of us, the consequences of its full-blown return are not likely to be good: for inflation is not an economic problem only, or even mainly, but one that afflicts the human soul.
No Laughing Allowed
Even the heavy left-leaning Time Magazine admits the Obama gets a free pass . . . from comedians. Of course, it's not because the comedians are in the left-bound world of entertainment, nor because comedians don't want to take on the race issue. But because Obama is just so doggone smart and charming! What's there to make fun of?
The burning question for the Obama age: What the heck were political comedians going to do? For eight years they had enjoyed a comedic gift from the gods in George W. Bush, whose bumbling presidency provided even richer material than the cartoonish excesses of the Clinton years. But Obama, with his obvious smarts, low-key style and (most important) ability to catch the prevailing tone of irony and laugh at himself, has left the comics with little to hang their punch lines on.
Yeah, I nearly vomited, too.
Boy, what could comedians possibly joke about? His rise in Cook County politics. His foreign etiquette gaffes. His unusual national background. His Reverend Wright. His bizarre ideas--whether they're good or not, people can debate, but they are bizarre--that we can print trillions and take over GM and socialize healthcare and still be the same America we used to be. If you want to get more personal, the comedians could try his, um . . . er aggressive-looking wife, his role as first black president, his ears, his smoking.
The fodder is out there, but no one wants to be accused on Judgment Day of making fun of a god.
