{"id":55690,"date":"2015-10-14T11:50:32","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T16:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=55690"},"modified":"2016-10-17T21:26:21","modified_gmt":"2016-10-18T02:26:21","slug":"old-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=55690","title":{"rendered":"Pining For The Good Ol’ Days"},"content":{"rendered":"

SCENE: \u00a0The handheld camera walks to the door of the basement headquarters of “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com”. \u00a0A crudely hand-lettered sign on the door reads “Wingnuts NOT ALOUD”. \u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

The camera steps down the stairs into the hidden lair where the magic happens. \u00a0Around a table, eyes glued to TV in an entertainment center along the wall, are\u00a0MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com’s writing staff; Aaron Roston, Gutterball Gary, Cat Scat, Leaky The Beagle, Betty Rae Torstengaardsen and Avery Librelle. \u00a0\u00a0At the head of the table, slouching in a folding chair, nervously running his hand through his hair, is Edmund DuChey, wearing a name-tag that identifies himself as the “Publisher” and “Senior Managing Executive Editor” of\u00a0MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com. \u00a0<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

The assembled group is watching as the closing credits roll on the Democrat debate.\u00a0\u00a0Starting with DuChey, the group breaks into wan applause. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

GUTTERBALL GARY: \u00a0YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! \u00a0(Nobody bats an eye)<\/em><\/p>\n

LEAKY THE BEAGLE: \u00a0(Speaking in an absurd phony German accent<\/em>) \u00a0Very intereshtink.<\/p>\n

CAT SCAT: \u00a0And every word was entirely true! \u00a0I Googled it!<\/p>\n

AARON ROSTON: \u00a0Stupid wingnuts won’t know what hit them.<\/p>\n

BETTY RAE TORSTENGAARDSEN: \u00a0You know what I liked about Bernie Sanders? \u00a0The positions he was talking about were almost identical to the positions of Nelson Rockefeller…<\/p>\n

DUCHEY: \u00a0(hissing, making “puke” symbol with his finger<\/em>)\u00a0He was a\u00a0Republican<\/em><\/p>\n

GARY: \u00a0Rerthug<\/em>licon<\/em>!<\/p>\n

TORSTENGAARDSEN: \u00a0Right – the point is, the Democratic party of today is right about where the Republican party was in 1968.<\/p>\n

ROSTON: \u00a0Right. \u00a0And not that different from President Johnson.<\/p>\n

DUCHEY: \u00a0Peace be unto him.<\/p>\n

LIBRELLE: \u00a0And that was a time when the US was at its political and economic peak.<\/p>\n

SCAT: Let me Google that…yes. \u00a0It says so right here on “SmirkingChimp.com!” \u00a0It’s a fact!<\/p>\n

DUCHEY: I just wanna tell the stupid ignorant wingnuts to suck on that: \u00a0when the US government was at its most progressive, we were at our economic and political peak.<\/p>\n

BEAGLE: \u00a0Very intereschtink.<\/p>\n

(A brief burst of static and feedback erupts. \u00a0 A VOICE FROM ABOVE breaks in<\/em>)<\/p>\n

VOICE FROM ABOVE: \u00a0Oh, that’s just stupid, people. \u00a0Use your brains. \u00a0In 1968, the US was the world’s only significant economy. \u00a0Japan and Germany were just barely recovered from World War II. \u00a0South Korea was trailing North Korea<\/em>, economically. \u00a0 Singapore was a\u00a0poverty-stricken third-world hellhole. \u00a0Russia and China were gangster playgrounds that could barely feed their own people – indeed, China was still suffering famines. \u00a0India was just descending into the nadir of its experience with socialism, and there was speculation that half of its people would starve to death by 1980. \u00a0 And we were able to import whatever oil that we didn’t produce, at incredibly favorable rates from impoverished countries that were happy for the business.<\/p>\n

In 1968, the US was one of two military superpowers – but it was the only economic superpower. \u00a0The entire world was its market. \u00a0So the likes of LBJ and Nelson Rockefeller could feel free to \u00a0write post-dated checks for fripperies like bottomless entitlement programs and count on the Growth Fairy to let future generations pay for them – because it’d worked just fine for…the previous 20 years or so.<\/p>\n

We were like someone who’d just won the lottery, and was spending like there was no tomorrow.<\/p>\n

ROSTON: \u00a0Who is that?<\/p>\n

SCAT: \u00a0Let me google that…<\/p>\n

TORSTENGAARDSEN: \u00a0It’s a voice from above…<\/p>\n

SCAT: \u00a0Hah! \u00a0Johnson wasn’t president until 1972! \u00a0It says so on\u00a0Crooks and Liars.com<\/em>!<\/p>\n

VOICE: \u00a0In the seventies, Germany and Japan’s economies became competitive with ours, and OPEC and Iran sent tremors through our economy by jiggling the oil market on \u00a0us. \u00a0In the 1980s, South Korea and Singapore became significant players. \u00a0In the 1990s, India threw off the worst excesses of socialism, and China pragmatically moved into state cartel capitalism, and suddenly they were legitimate competitors, too.<\/p>\n

In other words, the US is no longer an economic hegemon. \u00a0Extremely powerful, yes – but not dominant in the way we were in 1968. \u00a0Which means we actually have to compete, and be smart.<\/p>\n

So it’s fair and accurate to say that the US was at its political and economic peak in 1968\u00a0in spite\u00a0<\/em>of the likes of Rockefeller and LBJ, not because of them. \u00a0And that our position of extreme economic dominance made their variety of entitlement-based government sustainable, for a while, provided that we retained absolute economic supremacy over the entire world.<\/p>\n

ROSTON: \u00a0This is freaky.<\/p>\n

BEAGLE: \u00a0Yezz, it izzz<\/p>\n

GUTTERBALL: \u00a0IT’S A SIGN!<\/p>\n

TORSTENGAARDSEN: \u00a0What the…<\/p>\n

(Camera cuts to exterior shot. \u00a0Mitch BERG, holding a bullhorn up to a window casing, looks into the camera lens, as he stands up to walk away<\/em>)<\/p>\n

BERG: \u00a0What? \u00a0I don’t get to have a little fun, too?<\/p>\n

(BERG walks away to a waiting car, as the scene in the basement descends into panicky pandemonium<\/em>)<\/p>\n

(And SCENE<\/em>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SCENE: \u00a0The handheld camera walks to the door of the basement headquarters of “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com”. \u00a0A crudely hand-lettered sign on the door reads “Wingnuts NOT ALOUD”. \u00a0\u00a0 The camera steps down the stairs into the hidden lair where the magic happens. \u00a0Around a table, eyes glued to TV in an entertainment center along the wall, are\u00a0MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,20],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-55690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-16","category-democrats","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55690"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55702,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55690\/revisions\/55702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}