In America, Ignorance is Bliss

We live in a world burdened by the naivety of uninformed Americans. Potential voters thirsty for confirmation bias tune into MSNBC to digest decorative rhetoric suggesting catastrophic downward trends in the US economy and consequently crave the man who preaches change and a quick fix to the US economy.

McCain cannot win this election. The media and Democrats, redundancy not intended, will hammer down the connection between McCain, Bush, and a failing economy. Naïve voters who believe Bush plays a profound role in this potential recession will be turned off by the false link between McCain and Bush and will vote Democratic.

This connection, specifically between Bush and the economy, only exists in the ignorance of those who buy into belligerent and false accusations from liberals hoping to put a Democrat back in the White House. According to recent polls, this accounts for 3 out of 4 potential voters.

These polls did not ask specifically which of Bush’s economic policies led to a sluggish economy. Surely such a question would have generated barbarian responses, the majority articulately reflecting the familiar “Bush sucks” or “He looks like a monkey”.

It cannot be advocated that Bush has helped the economy. Equally so, it cannot be advocated that he has hurt the economy. This is simply because he has very little influence over the fiscal workings of our country.

No single force controls the economy. Essentially, the economy is manipulated by multiple, unpredictable outside forces that won’t cower in reaction to Barack Obama’s confiscation of excessive oil profits or John McCain’s own tax proposals. The economy answers to no one.

Daniel Gross effectively portrayed this reality in a post on Slate this past Saturday:

“But the factors that influence the business cycle are so myriad, powerful,
and unpredictable that not even an executive as muscular as California Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger could bend them to his will. The megatrends that made the
199s a long summer of economic love—the end of the cold war, the deflationary
influence of an emerging China, the Internet—would have happened with or without
Rubinomics. And most of the factors now making life miserable—commodity
inflation, a housing bubble and a weak dollar engineered by the Federal
Reserve’s promiscuous policies, the demand-driven surge in oil—would likely have
materialized had John Kerry won in 2004.”

The media displays raw ignorance towards the notion that Bush has not greatly affected the economy. They advocate a relationship between his policies and the weak economy. They further advocate the exaggeration of the economy’s state to the benefit of Barack Obama.

How does the exaggeration of a lagging economy benefit the junior senator? Consumer confidence, beat down by the media’s portrayal of a depressed economy, has hit a 16-year-low. When confidence is down consumers are unwilling to take risks, make investments, and put money back into the economy.

When the economy is lagging, voters are more likely to vote for the candidate least connected with the current president who they falsely believe is responsible for this mess. The voters, plagued by an inherent naivety and enthralled by decorative rhetoric, will vote with the intoxicated notion that Bush created this economic catastrophe, McCain is a continuation of his failed policies, and Barack Obama can provide a quick fix to such economic woes.

Ignorance is bliss? Only in America.