[Leica] Steinbeck and Lange

[roark.paul at gmail.com (Paul Roark)]

> It amazes me that any 'working poor' or 'middle class' vote Republican in 
> the US, ...

I, too, have tried to understand this.  Part of me thinks it's based
on some human characteristic that underlies the royalist mentality
also.  I think psychologists would have fun studying this apparent
inconsistency.

I'm rather schizophrenic on what is going on and the process.  As a
former government worker (US Federal Trade Commission), I worked with
both parties' leaders and waved my non-partisan flag rather
vigorously.  I tried to do my job (antitrust and consumer protection
law enforcement -- part of the field of "law and economics") as
"scientifically" as possible, and the political types I dealt with in
both parties were very bright, good people, despite some of the
rhetoric they spouted when the TV cameras were on.  In economics,
there is lots of room for reasonable people to disagree.

I actually came to the point that I felt the only thing worth
believing in is that the democratic process beats the alternatives.
The voters often did not understand the reasons for their feelings or
solutions to the problems, but they were responding at a gut level to
a valid societal problem.  It was then up to the leaders to figure out
the solutions.

That's where I have the fear on this round.  I think the Tea Party
types actually will crash the world economy.  I don't think they have
the gravitas to find a rational solution or understand the
consequences of their actions.

It might come down to the Supreme Court deciding whether the 14th
Amendment gives the president the power to pay the bills.  As much as
I dislike the current conservative makeup of the Court, again, my
experience in antitrust is that the Supreme Court is often ahead of
the experts in the field. Their broader field of view, perhaps, tends
to keep them from being too swayed by the current fads of the narrow
fields, and a life-time appointment removes much of the political
pressure.

And, on topic, I'm a huge fan of Steinbeck and Lange, but it never
occurred to me that I might actually have to experience the type of
depression they portrayed -- until now.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com