UNREALITY SQUARED

"The difference between reality and unreality is that reality

 has so little to recommend it." ~ Allen Sherman

Five weeks before the November elections, I am totally tired of hearing that it's impossible to enact effective economic policies to revive the economy before the election.  This week the Senate Democrats once again cowardly retreated and said they would not consider the expiring Bush tax cuts until after the election, as if that will give them a better chance to do the right thing. The media barrage of "The Republicans, powered by the tea partiers, are poised to take over the country – or at least the House of Representatives," and "The Democrats are cowering in their corner, wondering what to do," is unrelenting. Shadowy pollsters dutifully report their "latest insight" on a daily (or is it hourly?) basis to ratchet up anxiety for the tiny minority of people that purport to pay attention to such trivia. My bet is these poll/political minutiae super-consumers probably represent no more than a twentieth of the folks across the US that were reported last week to make more than $7,700,000 per year (themselves representing the top-earning 0.1% of taxpayers); at most maybe 15,000 souls in this nation of 310 million carrying iPhones with thousands of ever-active politico apps. But, boy, their shadowy influence seems to be growing over the "political cognoscenti." Extremes are strengthening at the expense of enacting well-recognized, effective policies to end the Great Recession for the millions of folks who remain unemployed. Why on earth is the political class arguing instead about the merits of giving the very wealthiest Americans a continued tax break? Talk about unreality from both ends of the political spectrum and tyranny of the minority. [In this paper I've given this current, unfortunate situation that we increasingly seem to be living in, when the extremes dominate the middle, the moniker "unreality squared."]

Why does it seem that when we're talking about political or economic forces the "normal (or bell) curve" – that we learned long ago best represents the real distribution of a wide variety of factors and characteristics, like people's heights and student test scores – no longer applies. See the traditional bell curve in this linked figure. Now, the bell curve may be old-school and has turned upside down, meaning the extremes of the distribution are far more prominent than the middle. This upside-down normal curve was termed "the Well Curve" by Daniel Pink, among the first to talk about it. More rigorously, the Well Curve is a type of bimodal distribution. Pink's Wired article, shows his Well Curve, representing the distribution of employees by firm size, illustrating the increase in tiny, "non-employer businesses" without any paid employees and the simultaneous increase in huge, corporate, multi-national enterprises. As he states, "while the big grow bigger and the small multiply, midsize enterprises are waning." Just like the income distribution in the US over the past decade or so – labeled as the hollowing out and drooping of the middle class; and just like the unwarranted excessive media frenzy about a " preacher " of a miniscule church who threatened to undertake some undisputed craziness guaranteed to upset lots of people. He knew what he was doing and won in a large sense. Will the media ever learn when to NOT promote a story covering an extremely crazy person that also creates huge negative consequences? Apparently not.

The 24/7 media cycle exacerbates this unreality for two reasons: (1) because the multitude of media sources are always desperately searching for material, no matter what its veracity or message – witness the "birthers" who refuse to accede to facts and reality, but still get media attention. What and who are we to believe in this age of instant, real-time expertdom and blog blasts from anyone who wants to spend a nanosecond or three analyzing the scene? And (2) because extremers – folks who purposefully use the media to broadcast their rhetoric-over-reality positions (see tea partiers among others) – know how to play the media game all too successfully. As I've mentioned before in other Papers, the fractionalization of modern American society also contributes to the increasing ease by which extremers of any sort disproportionately influence what used to be called "public opinion" through media exposure.

Is this a new phenomenon? Perhaps it is in its perceived intensity and frequency (due to modern telecommunications technology), but probably not as occurrences. Columnist Gail Collins wrote recently that "5 percent of our population is and always will be totally crazy." I personally believe it's a lot greater than 5%, but 5% still represents on average more than 300,000 crazies per state. It is just that this 5% now has a more visible, increasing and wholly undeserved prominence than ever before. It's this technology that challenges the drooping "middle" (perhaps a modern-day "silent majority") to remain relevant. That crazy Florida minister extremer allegedly received a phone call from the US Secretary of Defense who pleaded with him to renounce his plans. Amazing. What further incentives could "the establishment" provide make to extremers threaten more stupid, self-serving actions?

The Republicans apparently want to ride this wild elephant of extremers into the future; the Democrats once again, don't really know what to do and thus remain tentative, faltering and hesitant. This lack of conviction about calling a spade a spade (that the extremers are mostly idiots, unqualified for public office and don't have a cogent idea in their heads that is founded on common sense) will likely make their political demise a tragic reality on Nov 3^rd. In contrast, the Republicans have no qualms about offending people with their hypocrisy and self-righteousness.

The extreme tails of our society have figured out how to work the system and create unreality squared. Politically, we will see in about five weeks if the extremers who actually got on a ballot (including folks like Sharon Angle in NV, Carly Fiorina in CA, Carl Paladino in NY, Joe Miller in AK and Christine O’Donnell in MD) can win a general election. My view is that the outcomes will depend (as always) on who can get more of their supporters away from their TVs and DVRs to vote. So far, the Democrats have provided few motivating reasons for going to the polls and casting a vote for reason, rationality and common sense. Not admitting there's a wild elephant in the room that needs to be contained, countered and crushed will not provide victory for Democratic candidates in close elections. The Democrats should be ashamed of their feeble campaign performances so far.

For their own reasons, most media have relentlessly played up the possibilities of the extremers winning. I don't think this outcome is such a sure thing, assuming their opponents start actively countering the extremers. And I sincerely hope that does not come to pass and that the "muddled middle" can finally see that despite their justifiable upset at what they (and we) are facing economically, voting in extremers won't do anything positive beyond feeling good on Nov 2^nd. How could it when, among other things, extremers want to prioritize legislation to outlaw masturbation and eliminate Social Security rather than getting the country moving again (economically speaking)? How many "typical" voters really think it's in their best interest to give very rich folks continued tax relief? Probably more than I'd want to admit, but hopefully not a plurality. [An interesting article in Slate about perceptions of income/wealth distribution in the US makes the case that many non wealthy people are quite ignorant about the very large (and growing) proportion of the economic pie that is held by the wealthy. From this article, the richest 20% account for 93% of the nation's net worth (when you subtract housing; if you don't subtract housing it's 85%)] Time will tell.

My recommendation to counter unreality squared, above all, is GO VOTE on Nov 2^nd.