Words words words...

This morning, I listened to a report on Marketplace about U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's encouraging words.  Simple words, really, in a sea change from the normal diatribes he offers.  He said, and I'm paraphrasing a little, 'Check out the stock market.  It's doing well so the financial recovery of the U.S. is obviously on track.'

I'm no economic wizard, but something in my reptilian brain broadcast an emergency alert as I listened.  Hmm, how was the market at the beginning of the mess?  The stock market didn't crash until September 2008.  But the start of the current recession is usually pegged to 2007 and the market continued to do its little dance higher and higher until late 2008.  Hmm.  I don't know enough to say whether this means anything but I just don't think the stock market is any indicator of the country's financial stability.  For that, I think you have to look at debt, whether the debt of the country, the debt of its states or the debt of its population.  Oh, and unemployment figures.  And housing.  And the price of food and gas.

Blah blah blah, I'm going to prove my eventual point with my own diarrhea mouth.

Believe it or not, I'm not interested in talking money.  (Real quick though, I have to holler out that I think Congress's commitment to reduce federal spending by 30 or 50 or 100 billion is a heap of bullcrap in exchange for the pretty diamond they tossed in the bin when the Republicans demanded and the Democrats helped deliver tax cuts amounting to $400 billion per year in late 2010.)  What I am interested in right now is the abundance of words that circulate around and around that are the wrong words delivered strategically to become right.  It's more than revisionism because that usually takes some time for people to forget.  And it isn't simply marketing because that's somehow more benign.  I think it's propaganda.

Over the last week, I've wondered why a couple female figureheads, one a politician and the other a former, manage to secure so much press when so many of the words they utter are factually incorrect.  Then I was curious how an actually knowledgeable female politician could comfortably issue such a trite response to the violence in Egypt.  Finally, it was Bernanke's words, and the consequential mosh pit in my amygdala, that got me to writing this morning.

Bachmann, a Congresswoman from Minnesota, has decided that her version of U.S. history has the country's founding fathers "working tirelessly" to end slavery.  It doesn't seem to matter to her that this claim is patently false.  Several of the founding fathers, including Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and Washington, owned slaves.  Indeed, despite language in the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal," the Constitution states that slaves will count as only 3/5 of a person.  This clause was added in a concession to less populated southern, slave-owning states who wanted to count their non-voting slaves in order to secure higher representation in Congress while minimizing the distribution of tax.  Smarties, those southerners.  Tragically inhumane, but strategic.

So, is Bachmann simply a pathetic flunkie of U.S. History or is she shamelessly seeking to wipe the dirty bits off the country's slate?  And, in conveying a more perfect history, is she actually trying to cultivate perceptions among her Tea Party supporters, and others, that will keep them from demanding the little things-- social welfare, education, health care, infrastructure, peace.  I'm feeling a bit like her aim is to convince Americans who don't know better that the government has no obligation to adhere to the social contract.

Without access to those niceties that make every generation better, smarter, happier than the last, nice but wholly incorrect, words about our past might make us feel good, make us feel like we've always been right and therefore no wrong can be done.  And if we don't know better, we won't realize that our errors are actually ruining us.  We don't need to be sold fake sunshine; we can get the real stuff for free.  For now.

By the way, what's with these brunette bombshells capturing the unjustified respect of the Tea Partiers?  Come on now.  Real women speak the truth.  They know we learn from our mistakes, and not from propaganda.  But, that's a topic for another post.