The Way We Live Now, circa 2012, via Nick Paumgarten, in the New Yorker:
The Jerkstore opened for business during the Bush-Gore Presidential race. It’s an e-mail chain started by a prison-lock magnate in the Midwest, an adherent of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, who felt that our representatives in Washington had lost sight of fundamental free-market principles. He liked to compare the United States (flatteringly) to the Roman Empire, and to call anyone who disagreed with him, including Barack Obama, “economically illiterate.” …
The campaign seemed to be following a Carter-Reagan script. He predicted a landslide for Romney. On Election Day, he had half a dozen steak-dinner bets in hand. As night fell, and the counting began, he wrote, gleefully, “It’s morning in America!” Then he went silent. The night ended with a dispatch: “The people have spoken. I tried.” And then: “I’m crying.”…
*****The man at the bar began to tick off reasons that a guy in his line of work might not greet a second Obama Administration with enthusiasm: for starters, there was the likelihood of higher taxes, greater regulation, and fiscal-cliff procrastination, and therefore of less money, in the short run, and economic Armageddon, in the long run. He wasn’t averse to paying higher taxes—and found it “ridiculous” that Romney got away with paying only fourteen per cent. (“Still, it’s legal.”) “Nobody cares about the difference between thirty-six and thirty-nine per cent, if that extra three per cent goes to the right things,” he said. “But we’ve spent six trillion dollars and don’t have one building to show for it that you can hang anyone’s name on.”…
Truly, a tiny parable for our imperfect era. For what shall it profit a Jerk, if an economic meltdown is averted and millions of lives made better, yet there is no plinth to elevate someone’s narcissism?
Late Night Open Thread: Consider The JerkstorePost + Comments (63)