Selling Ideas

Ideologues are in the business of selling ideas. They package them up in ways to make them attractive, palatable, memorable, believable, etc. No concern for truth. This is pure salesmanship.

Paul Krugman has taken on the task of trying to chop down the lies as fast as they sprout up. Here is a bit from his latest effort in a NY Times op-ed:

Job creation has been disappointing, but first-quarter corporate profits were up 44 percent from a year earlier. Consumers are nervous, but the Dow, which was below 8,000 on the day President Obama was inaugurated, is now over 10,000. In a rational universe, American business would be very happy with Mr. Obama.

But no. All the buzz lately is that the Obama administration is “antibusiness.” And there are widespread claims that fears about taxes, regulation and budget deficits are holding down business spending and blocking economic recovery.

How much truth is there to these claims? None. Business spending is indeed low, but no lower than one would have expected given widespread overcapacity and weak consumer spending. Business leaders are feeling unloved, but giving them a group hug won’t cure what ails the economy.

Ask the Obama-is-scaring-business crowd for some actual evidence supporting their claim, and they’ll tell you that business spending on plant and equipment is at its lowest level, as a share of G.D.P., in 40 years. What they don’t mention is the fact that business investment always falls sharply when the economy is depressed. After all, why should businesses expand their production capacity when they’re not selling enough to use the capacity they already have? And in case you haven’t noticed, we still have a deeply depressed economy.

These are the same guys who sold you the first Gulf War by trotting out a young woman with a tearful tales of how Iraqi troops had smashed into a hospital in Kuwait and callously threw babies from incubators so they could round them up and send them to Iraq. It was all lies, but it was packaged by a Washington PR firm and produced in front of a Congressional Hearing. And the woman? She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Canada and that daughter had not been in Kuwait and did not see any babies tossed out. This was pure fiction generated to sell a war.

That was Bush I. Bush II did something similar when he pushed the dread story of "weapons of mass destruction" to justify the 2003 Iraq war. No truth to it, but everybody can remember the earnest testimony of of Colin Powell at the UN doing a dog-and-pony show with slides and "intelligence reports" that were pure baloney.

Those same right wing nuts are now selling austeriry and "the sky is falling" because the debt/deficit is too big. As Krugman points out, it is all lies, but it will probably be successful because the right wing nuts are paying Madison Avenue's finest to come up with "packaging" that will let them sell this soap to the American people. Sad.