Right There, Right Then
For the kids among you, let me just say, it really was bliss to be alive in those days and on that night in particular, and to be American was very . . . giddy. A powerful upwelling of fellow-feeling, relief (we weren’t all going to die!) and sheer vicarious triumphalism. It was that rare occasion when the best thing you could imagine happening, happened.
It made us crazy-happy the way 9/11 made people crazy-scared. Some of us – me, for instance! – drew some odd lessons from the whole thing. Like, a coalition of mixed economies outlast a coalition of command economies in a geopolitical rivalry. Inescapable conclusion: mixed economies are doomed! You hear echoes of that one to this very day: Liberals want to expand health coverage to some bigger fraction of what they have in European Hellhole X? But but – the Soviet Union fell!
I swear to you it made sense at the time.
Say this for the oligarchs controlling the Warsaw Pact: they knew when they were beaten. Our own gladhanding elites, having smoked as much Norman Vincent Peale as they’ve sold, don’t know the meaning of “quit,” or bankrupt or laughing stock or delusional or sucking fiscal chest wound.They keep decreeing bennies for themselves and keep believing they deserve the bennies because, vertiginously, they believe they deserve them. Meanwhile they spend years on end blowing people up halfway around the world because they know they’re in the right, having appointed an expert commission of themselves to render a considered, nonpartisan judgment on the matter. They torture, which they must do because they are the good guys, and if they don’t torture, the bad guys will win.
I could never wish that the Wall never fell: hundreds of millions of lives improved at least tangentially; tens of millions of people were vastly better off for it. But I can’t shake the feeling that all the bubbles and busts and blowback of the last two decades stems from the hubris of that victory 20 years ago. History shot at us and missed and we imagined ourselves immortal. Now we just look ridiculous, never moreso than when telling ourselves we need to revel in old glories even more, like a nation of Redskins fans doting on the first reign of Coach Joe.
So let us mark the occasion with prayer.
Comment by y81 —
November 9, 2009 @ 11:33 pm
What about the bubbles and busts and blowbacks before 1989? Products of Allied triumphalism after the defeat of the Axis?
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 9, 2009 @ 11:39 pm
What are some asset bubbles in the 1945-1989 period? Serious question. As to blowback, you had, what, Puerto Rican separatist terrorists? I can’t think of too many other foreign-policy chickens coming home to roost pre-Gulf War. Am I forgetting some?
If I were to suggest the collapse of Bretton Woods was indeed a consequence of Keynesianold-triumphalism, would you disagree?
Comment by Jim Henley —
November 9, 2009 @ 11:40 pm
Also, would you consider post-WWII American foreign policy to be blissfully free of triumphalism? Untainted by any feeling of one’s oats as the preeminent western power? Would you expect to convince, say, the British ruling class of that view?
Comment by Kolohe —
November 10, 2009 @ 1:05 am
What are some asset bubbles in the 1945-1989 period?
1987 comes to mind, just because that’s the first one I’m old enough to remember.
And you sort of answer your questions in the 2nd comment with your third.
The triumphalism of post WW2 was directly related to choices made wrt Korea, Vietnam, the moon shot, and the Great Society. (to mention some things with various levels of success) Kennedy was it’s living emodiment, no?
Then the seventies happened, then the eighties, which wound up with the events of March 1991 (in many ways more important than the events of August 1991 – just because thankfully the latter was much more a non-event than it could have been) in a situation somewhat similary to where we where in August 1945.
So, I disagree that American hubris and ‘bubbles, bursts, and blowback’ are something new in American history – to the contrary, all four of these things *define* American history.
Comment by Kolohe —
November 10, 2009 @ 1:11 am
See also, the War of 1812, Manifest Destiny, the Alamo, slavery, Ft Sumter, the railroads, the Panic of 18xx/19xx, etc etc.
Comment by BDR —
November 10, 2009 @ 7:40 am
Jesus Jones, man, at least you’re not still waiting, waiting…
Comment by IOZ —
November 10, 2009 @ 10:54 am
Well I am flattered, but I’m not that young!
Comment by Thoreau —
November 10, 2009 @ 12:41 pm
Jim, most of the architects of our various over-reaches in the past 20 years probably never adhered to a vision of market economics as stringent or honest as yours. While you have advocated for free markets that are, in fact, free and open and competitive (i.e. places where even a rich man might lose money from time to time) most of the elites engineering our excesses have a vision of profit for themselves. If “free market” is an appealing label to slap on the package, so be it. You have nothing to apologize for.
Although I was in middle school at the time, it was pretty exciting to open up a newspaper every day and read about another country opening up, another bad guy going down, another large group of people getting to experience a better life.
Comment by Barry —
November 10, 2009 @ 1:29 pm
Jim: “Say this for the oligarchs controlling the Warsaw Pact: they knew when they were beaten. Our own gladhanding elites, having smoked as much Norman Vincent Peale as they’ve sold, don’t know the meaning of “quit,” or bankrupt or laughing stock or delusional or sucking fiscal chest wound.”
Not really; the equivalent for our elites would be in 20 or 30 years of a world where the current situation sounds Pretty D*mn Good. The USSR went out of business ~1991, but had been on a decline for quite a while (since the 1960’s? 70’s?).
Comment by marcel —
November 10, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
which wound up with the events of March 1991. Must be a diehard Northern Michigan fan.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
November 10, 2009 @ 5:44 pm
I remember being completely baffled the first couple of times conservatives did this. I remember someone once offering a mock apology about how badly I must feel that the Soviet Union was collapsing.
I don’t think he was faking, either. I think he honestly believed that liberals and Democrats were quite upset when the Wall came down.
Comment by JMG —
November 10, 2009 @ 9:14 pm
An outstanding piece of writing. My congratulations.
Comment by y81 —
November 11, 2009 @ 3:03 pm
Asset bubbles from 1945 to 1989? The Nifty Fifty (growth stocks during the early sixties). Gold in the late 1970s (reached about $800/oz., if memory serves, before crashing). The stock market in the mid-80s, before the crash of 1987. Commercial real estate in the mid-80s, which started crashing about 1989 and didn’t start recovering until about 1993. Oil in the late 70s. Etc.
Blowback? The Iranian hostage crisis (blowback from overthrowing Mossedagh and supporting the shah). The assassination of Diem didn’t work out so well either. Arguably, the Chinese intervention in Korea, although the term “blowback” is not well enough defined to make that one clear.
In general, it is very hard to defend the proposition that either the American economy or American foreign policy has performed worse during the past twenty years than during any previous twenty year period.