Idiot Fatigue

My blogger friend wrote to me the other day he was suffering “Idiot Fatigue” at puncturing holes in the thin fabric of fabrications that too often pass for mainstream commentary on war, peace, and life. I shared his thoughts with some others, of various backgrounds and leanings, and heard much the same. With one big difference: those older were wiser about how perseverance, faith, and sheer fightingness almost always overcomes, and how the doomsayers beguiling words are most often wrong.

One of the friends I often turn to is Jack Risko, blogger extraordinaire of Dinocrat. He marries hard-headed realism, solid numbers, and judgment, rather that being caught up in whatever furor the MSM, or fellow bloggers, is currently peddling.

Let me give you two recent examples:

Last week, Jack wrote about “Malthus, Eurabia, and the vagaries of mathematical projections.” Jack expects Europe to wizen up, and the U.S. as well, due to facing the real external threats and internal bankruptcies of runaway entitlement spending.

The projections of Eurabia are based on assumptions about the underlying docility of the supposedly enervated populations of Western Europe. That assumption of docility is in turn, in our view, based on potentially questionable projections of economic growth and prosperity. Our point is this: Europeans have among the nastiest histories of brutality, barbarism and genocide on the planet. From the 1790’s in France, through the 1930’s in Germany, and, to pick a tiny example, 1290 - 1656 in England, Europeans have shown themselves to be every bit as bloodthirsty and ruthless as anyone on the planet. It is unwise to assume that these characteristics can be bred out of peoples so quickly, no matter what the doddering elites and their court jesters in the MSM seek to portray.

Eurabia may well emerge. It is, however, our expectation that upheavals far worse than anyone is currently forecasting lie ahead for Europe and America in the intervening years.

Yesterday, Jack wrote about “Big economy, small deficits.”

Will Franklin also helpfully points out that major entitlement spending, currently around 9% of GDP, is expected to continue to rise sharply in coming years. And that is perhaps a useful item with which to conclude our summary: the US economy is astonishingly, unimaginably large, about $13 trillion (6-7x that of China for example). The US budget deficit is smallish, around $260 billion (or around 2% of GDP). And, stories to the contrary, expenditures on the military are miniscule by historical standards, at 4% or so of GDP. [See the graph at the link.] What the US needs to guard against and control over the next period of time are runaway entitlements. Otherwise, things are pretty good, and certainly outstanding by comparison with history.

We all need to read Jack, and be Jacks.