So I’m reading Erick Erickson’s latest missive:
At this point, the evidence is too overwhelming that people are staying out of work because the federal unemployment benefit is so big. In fact, right now people do not even have to show proof they are attempting to find work in order to get the federal supplemental unemployment benefit. Nonetheless, as recently as Friday, Joe Biden insisted this was not true.
The Democrats are arguing that if employers just boost their wages, they’ll incentivize people coming back to work. The problem is many employers are already doing that and still cannot get workers to come back to work. Some people are fine making less on unemployment while doing no work and not having to worry about eviction thanks to additional federal policies.
The consequences of these policies are going to be disastrous for the nation.
[Bold mine]
I was wondering how to evaluate this claim. And then it suddenly occurred to me:
- Gay marriage hasn’t ruined anyone’s marriage.
- Churches weren’t forced to marry gays.
- The ACA hasn’t ruined America.
- Lowering corporate taxes didn’t save America.
- America isn’t a smoking crater because of abortion rights.
- There’s been no plague of promiscuity because of the HPV vaccine.
- Regulations haven’t choked America to death.
- President Biden is not showing signs of being a doddering fool.
- International polls of American reputation do not show it plunging after Biden’s assumption of office, unlike Trump’s.
- The stock market isn’t a smoking crater because Trump lost.
In other words, the Republicans operate as a doomsday machine because that’s how the base has been trained. There’s an insistent drumbeat of doom: taxes are too high and soon we’ll all be poverty stricken, if we permit gun control the government will enslave us all, JADE HELM JADE HELM JADE HELM OH MY GOD, regulation is too stifling!, inflation will go through the roof if we implement Quantitative Easing!, abortion is unGodly and turning us into a charnel pit, omigodomigodomigod add your favorite cry of horror HERE.
And it all never comes true.
But the Republican base expects it, between training on the political side and the traditional insistence that the End Times are upon us!, from the pulpit to popular entertainment (see the Left Behind series by LaHaye). The World is perpetually coming to an end is the motivating message for the Republicans, from national to local races.
And. It’s. Just. Never. True.
So why should I take Erickson seriously? I’ve noticed he’s hardly every accurate except when he’s critiquing his own side. Trump did lose, as he feared. The atmosphere of the conservatives was conducive to disaster for them, as shown in the iconic January 6th insurrection. But where are the riots that were to follow RBG’s death and Barrett’s hearings?
And so I lose my motivation to even take him seriously. The Republicans have blown their credibility ever since at least Gingrich, if not Reagan, and it just makes them that much more of a loss for the Nation.
But that’s what happens to third and fourth raters, and theocrats. The End Times is the only tool they really have.
