This New England

The tendency of too many media to hype too many events based entirely on the fact that they're happening right now (like a TV station leading its news broadcast with a car crash) leads to something I'd call the ''narcissism of now,'' in which current travails, while bad, are accorded exaggerated severity.

Thus Barack Obama and others call the current woes the "worst financial crisis in a century,'' forgetting, apparently, the inconveniences of the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression (joblessness hitting more than 25 percent in 1933 and still at 18 percent in 1938, despite FDR's dulcet tones), or the long and deep 1970s recesssion, or the 1981-82 one, with unemployment near 11 percent. Because it involves us, it must be the best or the worst, right? We are the navel of history....(Doane Hulick's and Tracy Breton's friend Jesse, slightly northeast of this line, is contemplating the vagaries of history, by way. Thank you, Doane, for this Wyeth-like picture.)

Given that history has mostly disappeared as a serious discipline in many public schools and the decline in book-reading in favor of reading as short or shorter stuff than this blog, our self-referential reactions to crises should be no mystery. To anyone reading history for research or pleasure the popping of this speculative bubble is entirely unshocking, whatever the recent exotica of ''derivatives'' cooked up by Wall Street crooks and semi-crooks aided by government regulators hoping to be hired by them. Today's Tulipmania or South Sea Bubble.

Mainers say enough

Residents of Maine, which has among the nation's highest taxes, said enough was enough and abolished a new beverage tax in a referendum on Election Day. In a recession, particularly, they weren't about to pay more for beer, wine and some other of life's little liquid comforts -- especially before the long North Country winter. With heating- oil costs still high, they may be looking for other ways to keep warm.

Not only do Mainers feel tapped out, there are angered by how the legislature enacted the tax virtually in secret.

Thus look for more big budget cuts in the Pine Tree State, and a shelving of big plans, such as to expand health-care access. (On health care, I think the fix can only be efficiently made at the federal level. Money is fungible, and people can move, and so substantially improving the Western world's worst health-care system can only be across state lines.)

Politicians in other New England states better take note of the Maine vote. While the bizarre bill to abolish the Massachusetts income tax went down to defeat because it would have quickly paralyzed state government, economically anxious voters will be very wary of attempts to slide in tax (or "fee'') hikes by stealth -- or any other way -- over the next year or two of recession.

Still social conservatives?

Americans may like Barack Obama and other Democratic candidates a lot but they still don't seem very enthusiastic about gay marriage, if the Nov. 4 referenda results are to be believed.

 Tags  beverage tax Crash of 1929 gay marriage Maine

Comments

Saul Ricklin said:

T.S. Eliot wrote:
A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So while the light fades
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England

Link | November 8, 2008 11:10 AM
Report Abuse

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Saul Ricklin said:

T.S. Eliot wrote:
A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So while the light fades
On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England

Link | November 8, 2008 11:11 AM
Report Abuse

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