The Bureau of Labor Statistics today announced job survey results that came as a surprise to "analysts and economists": the unemployment rate has started down. America has come to grips with the most serious economic crisis it has faced since the 1930s. Now, we the common people of America have a simple message to you - the haves and have mores of elite Republicanism - have the common decency to be quiet and let us get back to work. Why you might even think about actually getting back to work yourself.
Perhaps a brief review of our recent economic and political history will be useful.
It was the year 2000. He strode into the Presidency - the finest flower, the greatest manifestation, the very epitome of Republicanism. Cocky, self-assured, self-aggrandizing surrounded by a phalanx of sycophants - this modern day Republican would sew into the fabric of American society "a permanent majority." But the most important quality held by George W. Bush - what aspect more than any other made the Repubican women and men swoon - he looked good in a codpiece.
It did not take long for Bush to articulate and implement the essence of Republican economic theory: use every lever of government power to bestow upon a privileged few as much of America;'s resources and power as could be done. Most specifically use the courts, the legislatures and the executive branch to raise as "more equal" citizens the most indolent of the wealthy, the most negligent of business persons, the most slothful and self-indulgent of the uber class.
Your deep economic thinkers reviewed the writing from Adam Smith to Ricardo to Hayek to Friedman and abstracted this principle: to make the economy really work all that is needed is to cut off the invisible hand - the mechanisms that impose discipline and require productivity. What is needed, you cried , was to bless an orgy of unchecked greed and untramelled avarice. To get there it was essential to diminish fundamental American institutions such as labor unions ("bust 'em), consumer protections ("screw 'em) and jury trials ("make them frivolous").
My how you succeeded. America has never seen such an orgy of unabated incompetent plundering in the vast gleaming towering spires of Wall Street. But you had the answer - more. Give the ordinary commoner - the unwashed plebe - the gullible consumer one simple message: "you will work harder."
Then came September of 2008. Yes - already a sense of unease with the majesty of your subtle thought was appearing. There were voices that warned darkly of an impending day of reckoning. But your mind was troubled not - they were obviously not sufficiently intelligent to understand the beauty of your conceptions. Why it was in September of 2008 that your candidate to replace George W. Bush proclaimed proudly - "the fundamentals of the economy are strong."
Then it happened. A veritable master of the universe came trembling before you. It was Hank Paulsen himself who had to tell you that Armaggedon itself was at hand. The whole banking system is gone - ATMs wont work, withdrawals will not be honored, payrolls wont be met. In short order the trucks will stop rolling, the shelves of grocery stores will be bare. Mr. President - there is no other way to say this - but we have destroyed the American economy and the only solution is to go back to those silly, ridiculous commoners and reach deep into the public till and throw sums beyond comprehension at the very morons of madness who have done this to us.
Why almost every morning in September of 2008 I saw you, Mr. Bush, on my teevee telling me that unless numbers even Carl Sagan would find staggering were just thrown at the idiot insurers the entire world economy would collapse. It had come to that.
So the American people wisely said enough. We have set out to restore fundamental American values and principles. We seek to make America great again. Fix a broken health care delivery system, lead the world into the next great age of human development when the carbon based economy gives way to a green and flowering world, and pull back from the throes of utter and complete bankruptcy American's greatest treasure - her moral and intellectual underpinnings. You have spent and spent and spent beyond measure from this great source of plenty - you shredded the Constitution, you have mocked the Great Writ - a writ that is as old and intertwined with the American fabric as the thinkings of Locke and Mills and Madison and Marshall - and, yes, you have tortured people. That is how low you depleted our treasure. In the name of America you tortured.
Now - when ordinary Americans are called upon to go back to work to repair the vast damage you have done you have again risen with one voice and uttered but one word - NO. From every corner of your Party comes but that one message. Your "intellectuals" speak of birth certificates and death camps and etchings on building that reveal conspiracies too intricate to fully understand but which all Americans must fear. You sell fear every day - deeper and more profound with each passing revelation of the utter emptiness of your constructive thought.
Well - today we say to you - enough. You have been sent to the sidelines because of what you have done. We are here to make it better. So let the brilliant among you openly call for American failure. Stand on the sidelines and cheer for America to fall short. Weep and gnash and tremble with fear - because fear is all you have - it is your stock in trade.
But America is going back to work - America is pointing to a new morning - a dawn rising from the midnight of Republican destruction. Hope, optimism and understanding that America has overcome threats more severe even than you are breaking across the darkling horizon.
It does seem, though, that at long last, you might have the common decency just to shut up.