Civil Commotion

I guess that’s starting the New Year with a bang …

Doing the year-end planning and organizing for next year, I’m seeing two big things at work.

First, I think we’re likely to see accelerating inflation and an increasing trade deficit, thanks to the tax bill. The nation is already at full employment — and the government is putting more money in circulation. That means more dollars chasing the same amount of goods, and that means inflation. Some of that will be offset by increasing imports — more jobs for other countries — but that means increasing trade deficits. Inflation points, in turn, toward higher interest rates. And, of course, if you want to borrow money you are going to be competing with the federal government, which will have to raise money to make good its deficits.

Builders will pay higher interest rates to borrow money to build homes, and manufacturers will pay higher rates to borrow money to make cars. Consumers, in turn, will face higher costs for both, and higher borrowing costs to purchase them.

So we are in for a year of economic turmoil, I think, and that will eat much of the benefit of the tax cut.

Second, I think the economic turmoil will be exacerbated by our political instability. Donald Trump is conspicuously, woefully, unfit for any public office — I wouldn’t allow him to sit at my kitchen table — and the pressure for his removal by either impeachment and conviction, or invocation of the 25^th-Amendment, will grow. If the Cabinet or the Congress should muster-up the wherewithal to do its plain duty, Trump will try to ignore them and remain in place. The economy hates uncertainty, and so the steady growth of the Obama economy will probably stop next year.

The bottom-line here is that I think the tax cut will conduce toward economic instability that exacerbates our political instability, and vice versa. If you have any big purchases planned for next year, do it now — and shore-up your household defenses against chaos.

I suppose the most astonishing aspect of this dismal year has been the realization of how little a lot of Americans know about their own country, about its history, ideals, and mechanics of self-government. Seriously: There is something grossly out-of-kilter when a fundraising advertisement ends with the words “Thank you, President Trump, for letting us say, ‘merry Christmas’ again” and the insult passes with scarce public remark and is quickly forgotten because it’s buried beneath other lies and insults.

It is time to stop indulging ignorant fantasists, to stop pretending they have something to say, and that it deserves respect. It does not.

• Resolute ignorance — faith — is not a virtue, but an inexhaustible engine of harm. When a Holy Man urges you to accept implausible and downright garish claims on ‘faith,’ and in the service of faith to commit harms against others (Leviticus’ teachings about sexuality, for instance), he summons you to intellectual dishonesty and serves only some combination of his own insecurities and avarice.

  Somewhere in America, on this very day, somebody got out of bed and was struck with an insight: “Damn. Why did I never see it? It’s so obvious! I am the incarnation of … SOUPY SALES!!” Should we take that seriously because, you know, neo-Soupy has faith? Of course not. The final word on the subject must be given to Friedrich Nietzsche: “A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.”

• Biological evolution by natural selection is real; it really happened, and it is still happening. Humankind is not a complete, final product that popped-up out of nowhere one day, like a toadstool, but a point on a continuum. We may die out, as have millions of other species, or we may persist for hundreds of millions of years as, say, cockroaches have. Genesis is wrong, and we who have done the hard work of understanding that are tired of you who won’t — and really tired of your relentless subversion of public education. Go away.

• David Barton is not a historian; he is a whore who specializes in servicing ignoramuses. America was founded by Enlightenment thinkers who meant to break the long train of bloodshed and ruin at the hands of the churches; it’s right in the Declaration of Independence.

  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

  Y’all should recall, too, the Preamble of the United States Constitution:

  We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

  The Founders could not have been plainer: They intended a country of thinking men and women who decide for themselves how their affairs shall be organized. It is a national disgrace that an incandescent theocrat like Roy Moore, a plain enemy of America’s foundational ideals, nearly assumed a seat in the Senate.

All of this nonsense must be confronted where and when it is encountered, and drowned in ridicule and ignominy; after all, it is the morons who don’t know these things who have handed the country over to an authoritarian proto-fascist who thinks our Constitution is a bother. 2018 will be the decisive year; it we won’t fight for our country, we will lose it.

Christmas is no time to let your guard down, so put that eggnog back in the refrigerator right now lest you give Satan a helping-hand. And never forget: Y’all are no damn good.