The Least Effective Threat in the History of Mankind

Dire warnings fail to sway senators on big bailout | Yahoo! News

What do you do when you can not offer any semblance of reason, any item of reality and any moral basis for what you advocate? You threaten, of course. A necessary condition for the threat to be effective, however, is that you threaten something that is not already happening. This important but trivial aspect of the threat was apparently lost on Chairman of the Federal Reserve Benjamin Bernanke and Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson. 

Refusing to be pushed, Republicans and Democrats alike rebuffed dire warnings Tuesday from the government’s top economic officials of recession, layoffs and foreclosed homes if Congress doesn’t quickly approve the administration’s emergency $700 billion financial bailout plan.

“Give us the money, or there will be recession!” the two chicken littles seemed to be screaming. Astonishingly, Congress seemed to be unswayed by this threat. For the first time in over a decade, the members of Congress seemed to be aware of reality (!!!), that the United States has been in a recession for over three years, and they stood firm in the face of this hollow threat. 

One may surmise that this threat, or “warning”, of recession was the strongest threat that their handlers offered Paulson and Bernanke. “Give us the money or we’ll tell everyone that Joe Biden has had hair transplants” was the runner up, most likely.

Educated, learned and exceptionally wealthy and intelligent men have been reduced to blathering idiots. In ancient Greece, this was comedy. In modern America, this is politics. More specifically, it is the ruling Republican Party. No art could possibly aspire to imitate such nonsense.

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