Analysis:
Index Portfolio Performance for the First Five Years of the Bush Administration
January 22, 2001 was the first day of trading after Mr. Bush became President. Three major indices stood at the following levels at the close of trading on that day:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 10,578.24
Standard & Poor's 500: 1342.9
NASDAQ Composite: 2757.91
At the close of trading today, January 20, 2006, these same three averages stood at the following levels:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 10,667.39
Standard & Poor's 500: 1,261.49
NASDAQ Composite: 2,247.70
If an investor were to have formed a portfolio based upon each of these three indices and managed each portfolio in terms of composition and balance to mirror the relevant index, the investor would have earned the following total nominal returns on investment:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: +0.84%
Standard & Poor's 500: —6.06%
NASDAQ Composite: —18.50%
Expressing these returns on an annualized (that is, "percentage return per year compounded") basis, the nominal results just presented are as following:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: +0.17% per year
Standard & Poor's 500: —1.24% per year
NASDAQ Composite: —4.01% per year
The above are nominal (that is, "not corrected for inflation") results. Taking into account the erosion of purchasing power (that is, "the effect of inflation") on portfolio value over the holding period requires adjusting the current portfolio value to its equivalent value on January 22, 2001. Using Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index data for January 2001, when the CPI stood at 175.1, and for December 2005, when the CPI stood at 196.8, to adjust the current value of each portfolio to its January 2001 equivalent, the following real return on investment (that is, "annualized rate of return on investment adjusted for inflation") would have accrued to each portfolio:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: —2.15% per year
Standard & Poor's 500: —3.53% per year
NASDAQ Composite: —6.23% per year
In other words, an investor forming a portfolio tracking the Dow Jones Industrial Average from the beginning of the Bush Administration in January of 2001 would have suffered a loss in real value of the portfolio of more than two percent per year, which compounds to a loss in purchasing power of the portfolio over the term of the Bush Administration of 10.28%; the investor forming a portfolio tracking the Standard & Poor's 500 over that period would have suffered a loss in real value of the portfolio of more than three and a half percent percent per year, which compounds to a loss in purchasing power of the portfolio over the term of the Bush Administration of 16.43%; and the investor forming a portfolio tracking the NASDAQ Composite index over that period would have suffered a loss in real value of the portfolio of close to six and a quarter percent per year, which compounds to a loss in purchasing power of the portfolio over the term of the Bush Administration of 27.50%.
From a well-balanced portfolio of the common stock of reasonably low-risk, very large public corporations to an equally well-balance portfolio of the common stock of relatively riskier, small-cap public corporations, equity (that is, "stock") has offered significantly negative real returns over the tenure of absolute Republican control of the Legislative and Executive Branches of the federal government. This is the objective assessment of the stock markets of the United States and reflects a number of shares traded in the quadrillions and value transferred in the process of far more.
Whatever representations the Bush Administration can make concerning the success of its economic policies, and despite the sustained, corrosive, and concerted effort of the Federal Reserve to support this Administration through what it described as "accommodative" monetary policy, by any rational standard the results herein set forth paint a broad and scathing picture of an Administration, a political party, and an entire program of economic policies that have been no less than disastrous on the equities markets and the hundreds of millions of people both here and abroad who rely upon those markets to accumulate value both in nominal and in real terms.
The Dark Wraith leaves to the American voters judgment of the malfeasant stewards of this fiasco: the Electorate may yet decide finally and resolutely that bluster and venom are no replacement at all for intelligence and responsibility.
Published 1/20/2006 06:00:00 PM
<< 35 Comments Total
Good afternoon Mr. Wraith,
Did tax cuts on dividends cause more companies to issue more dividends, and if so, what effect (both practical or theoretical) would this have on the market?
For the entirety of those five years, both Houses of Congress have been under the indisputable control of the Republican Party to which Mr. Bush belongs, and economic policy has therefore indisputably been in the care, custody, and complete control of George W. Bush and the Republican Members of Congress, who have worked hand-in-hand without any recourse by which the party of opposition or its constituents could alter the direction, character, or quality of that policy, either in its scope or in its details.
Call me picky, but the comment overreaches, if only by a smidgen.
There was that fairly brief span of time when the 50/50 split in the Senate went 51/49 (for caucus purposes), thanks to Sen. Jeffords.
- oddjob
Thanks much for reminding me of my misery. The only solace I can take from it is that since I have a chunk of my paycheck automatically withdrawn and invested each time I'm paid, the index fund shares I purchase also include shares purchased at the nadir in 2002, and those shares have indeed increased in value.
But on the whole, it still sucks.....
(Sigh.......)
- oddjob (who wasn't planning on retiring early anyway....)
Good evening, Mr. Goat. Theoretically, and I will check this one more time, the indices are measured on a metric of dividend plowback.
Again, I shall check one more time, though.
The Dark Wraith toils for the smoking gun of damning data.
Yesw, I suppose I should qualify my statement somewhat, OddJob.
The Dark Wraith might leave it long enough to see if it upsets the trolls, though.
Good afternoon, Dark Wraith.
That graph is even cooler than the last one! The colors really stand out and bring attention to the subject.
There is a rosy side to your article. Thankfully, some of us have no money to invest. We don't have to watch the market losses. Because os that, we have less stress in these trying times.
Good evening, Old White Lady.
Well, yes, I guess when you put it that way, poverty does have the advantage of leaving one rather immune to these kinds of financial tragedies.
Unfortunately, I am surprised at the number of people who have retirement funds of one sort or another with securities investments that aren't doing well at all; and the real tragedy is that these losses cannot be "made up" as some people have told me they hope to have happen. Securities markets don't work that way: efficient markets have no memory, so there's no making up a prior loss. That money is just gone forever, and all that matters is what's going to happen from this point forward.
Considering that we have three more years to suffer of this incompetence on stilts, the good times just aren't going to be rolling for a while.
But don't worry. I'm sure all of the super-rich people are suffering, too.
The Dark Wraith thought that saying something funny would ease the pain.
[Or not.]
Heaven forfend that the Masters of the Universe should suffer, or what's an ownership society for???
- oddjob
Good evening, Dark Wraith.
Oh, no! I never even thought about retirement monies!
Oy!
{sigh} I wish all this was as easy for me to understand as it was for you to write. I know this is your forte - but can't we just discuss something relatively easy by comparison - like quantum physics? And I'm not joking here.
By the by - thanks for your lovely comments regarding my Koufax nomination. I know you were one of the people who put my name in, and I'm very grateful. I really needed the uplift - today especially.
Nice charts and conceptually the idea plays well. But, how many of the uber-rich are invested in index funds.
I am definitely not rich and perhaps not all that bright. I do not have a balanced portfolio. Real heavy in Canadian royalty trusts and met coal companies. Returns have been double digit.
Good morning, Chief.
Your comment is exactly to the point. The very wealthy are not going to be investing in anything like the index portfolios. In fact, their portfolios are in many cases almost too complicated to describe in a summary manner that the average (even quite intelligent) reader would understand. For one thing, their portfolios will have asset structures that aren't even describable in terms of "equity" and "debt" in the traditional, "managerial finance" sense of those words. Moreover, the instruments in which they do invest can even have the ability to feed off a bleeding stock market. Something I didn't go into here is the point that the growth of the economy didn't just vanish into the thin air of negative returns on portfolios of stocks: that money went somewhere.
I shall leave it to the readers for the time being to figure out where that 'somewhere' is.
Now, as far as your note about your investments is concerned, I should offer two parts to my response. First, the index portfolios I showed are the market's assessment of the American economy. This assessment is brutal, honest, and driven by pure, unabated greed. It has no sentimentality, political affiliation, or human-driven agenda. It just doesn't. It's a physical system comprising quadrillions of trades and staggering amounts of value transferred with the efficiency of a refined, wholly cruel animal. What I have presented is that physical system's reflection of the judgment it has made on the first five years of the Bush Administration.
Also, whereas a number of people can and do invest in alternate securities, many cannot. The bulk, if not the entirety, of their investments is beyond their control, except in some perhaps facile, meaningless way. I have in my professional life met many people who thought of themselves as "investors" in some active sense. In fact, it is part of the schtick in stock brokering to make the clients feel like they're "in control." Only in some cases (and those cases are not the rule, they're the exception) are those investors really, truly in control of their portfolios. In most cases, the investments they make are shaped by misinformation, silly rules of thumb, and no small amount of subjective, emotion-driven action. The amount of unnecessary risk many people bear in their portfolios is just staggering, and it is not even worth a breath to try to explain to them the iron-clad relationship between risk and expected return. They just won't hear of it. Gladly, some of them are quite successful in their investments, and they see themselves as wizards of the stock markets. It was not my job, of course, to tell them that, rather than being wizards of the stock market, they were the rare beneficiaries of statistical odds.
I do, Chief, recommend that people—if they can do so without incurring debilitating transactions costs—consider diversifying their portfolios internationally. That is no good defense in a global meltdown, but it is entirely proper strategy in pursuit of good diversification and balance. That's what it appears to me is playing to your benefit: you understand the attractive possibilities in the markets of other countries, and you maintain balance and diversification through mutual funds. Not everyone—not even most people, I would venture—can do that, but yours is a good lesson in why it's worth the effort to at least look into those kinds of investments.
The Dark Wraith should probably diversify his own stock portfolio that way.
[Ah, that's right: I don't HAVE a stock portfolio.]
Well Dark Wraith, I will cease my lurking at this juncture to ask a relatively simplistic question about your re-calc for inflation, to ask why not the 'time value of money' versus 'erosion of purchasing power'? Purchasing power assumes the opportunity cost of items on speculation, does it not? Trend indices of commodities? Educate me, new blograde.
The illusion is also due to the confines of the 'big' retirement pools, as well-right? Diversification is for but a small percentage of investors, who have long since known where to put their chips anyway. Long before some of these 'index'numbers came to fruition. Thanks for the post, Dark Wraith. Came across you at Night Bird's Fpuntain, which I read pretty regularly.
Well, Lily, for asking "simplistic" questions, you pack quite a whollop. (I like you already.)
The time value of money would require a discount rate to be calculated. Now, that wouldn't be so difficult: I would use the Capital Asset Pricing Model, factoring with a weighted average equity beta for the index, itself. Obviously, beta would be pretty low (probably around .30) for the DJIA, and it would be higher for the S&P 500, and it would be even higher still for the NASDAQ Composite. Because the risk-free rate would already be embedded in the discount rate so calculate (since that rate is the constant term in the formula), the discount rate so calculated would have the inflation premium already built into it.
All of this is to the end of noting that calculating the present value at January 20, 2001, of each of the indices would certainly be a viable way to analyze the performance of the equities markets over the tenure to date of the Bush Administration. To some extent, what it would actually show is whether or not each of the portfolios today is on the capital market line. Although I haven't done the calculations, my betting is that none of the portfolios would be: they are underperformers, but remember that the easy money policy of the Fed suppressed interest rates for quite some time. This was counter-balanced by the heavy deficits the government was running: the net effect was that, even though interest rates were attractively low, when compared to global interest rates they were pretty strong, which is why the greenbacks have flowed out of this country with the net imports flowing in.
Alright. Enough of this nonsense. Primarily, I used the old-fashioned "constant dollars" approach just because it is old fashioned. It's pretty commonly used for comparing prices across time, and it's intuitively more appealing to most readers than the more intense present value concept.
And you have reminded me that I definitely need to do a Pulp Economics article explaining the whole concept of present value. It's something we in finance use all the time, and it's something I need to use more freely in my articles and in my comments.
I give. My fingers got tired pounding out this comment.
I'm definitely glad you're commenting here, now. I'll touch upon more of your inquiry in subsequent comments, so don't think I'm politely ignoring you. This is the place for political wonks, economics jockeys, and finance fans.
The Dark Wraith probably needs to put some more comfortable furniture in the lobby here at this diner.
Good Evening Dark Wraith,
the growth of the economy didn't just vanish into the thin air of negative returns on portfolios of stocks: that money went somewhere.
I shall leave it to the readers for the time being to figure out where that 'somewhere' is.
I'm beginning to get the creepy feeling that all the limits and rules on what you can and cannot invest your simple and Roth IRAs in, is all to the benefit of the people who now hold all that money that disappeared and is now somewhere else.
Good evening, SB Gypsy.
Such cynicism.
Surely you wouldn't want the government to give you the opportunity to reach into markets the government feels are too complicated for you.
Some clubs simply must remain private if there's to be any haven to which the better people can find refuge from the teeming masses.
Thank goodness your sentiments aren't well heard. Why, the next thing you know, common people would be asking for seats at the front of the capital accumulation bus. And what would they do there? They'd just sit there thinking they actually mattered or something.
The Dark Wraith believes in the natural ordering of people according to their worth.
[And Right-wing neo-cons are on sale this week, one dozen for a dollar... take two dozen, and we'll give you two bucks, AND we'll throw in a half-dozen spineless Democrats for good measure.]
Galbraith's most recent column in Mother Jones (I can't believe I'm actually reading such a ferociously left wing rag now & then.....) makes the observation that the new Fed Chairman is a believer in having the Fed. set an inflation target so as to give the participants in the economy a way of anticipating annual inflation.
Your thoughts on the propriety of such for the Fed?
(And wasn't that what they were doing back in the 60's that you have said was instrumental in causing that brutal stagflation of the 70's?)
- oddjob
Wholly OT, but I suspect DW will appreciate today's Zippy the Pinhead....
- oddjob
Utterly delightful, OddJob. I'm going to print that one out and post it in my office.
Now, I've been trying to work out a way to respond to the matter of our new fearless Fed führer and his grand scheme to tell everyone what to expect inflation to be, but I keep finding myself in a philosophical dilemma: do I put a reasoned response to such stunning idiocy, or do I just let fly with a tirade?
I took solace by rambling philosophical to a solid post by the Green Knight over at the Big Brass Blog, where I have just finished the first, cosmetic round of a make-over, by the way.
Yes, OddJob, the Fed Chairman is posing to tell the securities markets and everyone else what their expectations should be. In so doing, he fancies his knowledge of and control over the money supply to be so great that he can do such a thing, this despite the large and growing amount of that "money" that is not even availing itself to his control anymore.
He wants to "target" inflation in the same way that the Feds of yesteryear targeted interest rates to control unemployment. That led to a death spiral as expectations kept beating anticipations, and it was stopped only by the draconian actions of Jimmy Carter, who lost the Presidency because he did the right thing while his opponent in the Presidential Election of 1980 played on the ignorance of macroeconomics that was pervasive among the voters of that time: they wanted a simpleton to offer simpleton solutions, completely ignoring the overwhelming complexities of the issues and the responses that had already been put into place.
Thank God the voters of the 21st Century aren't like that at all.
The Dark Wraith is trying to keep from bursting out laughing.
Sorry, too late, ROFL!
Well, my investments consist of a 401K. I have tho option of putting it in various funds(small cap, large cap. overseas, etc.)or saying I intend to retire in x years and going with a generic.
Now, the wonderful thing about it is that with the cash match, I automatically make 100% return even if the markets all zero out as to return over time. So the crash would have to eat 50% of the total invested. Not bloody likely, and my ace card is the piddly percent in the "safe" guarenteed 3.5% section. A major crsh and I won't be happy, bu I won't have lost by it except through inflation.
As it stands, I've tweaked my % here and there, and am doing pretty well-my edumacated guesses have been good as to which funds to be in. I could have done better, but hey, I could have gone with the generic fund for retirement in about 20 years...it has lost about 10% over the past year, whereas I've gained at least that. While I realize one needs to look at investments over longer terms than a year, it does seem to show that the generic index type funds-the one's the least able of us will have access to- are right there with the rest of the republican red-headed step children...left behind.
In a year I've got $900+ in it at about $30/month personal cost. Enough to live on a couple weeks or so when I retire. Better than a lot of folks have in addition to whatever SS they can get. And I do have fun trying to guess where the wind will blow for the next quarter (it doesn't cost me to play with my investments, so there's another perk helping me). ANYONE reading this with an emplyer match program, go on and take it, even at only 1%, or $5, or whatever, it's found money. I's getting back some of the $$$ you're giving for others to find. Just pretend it's a tiny tax increase on your check. For me, it's a Taco Bell night instead of Chinese when we have to feed the kids in a hurry every two weeks. No biggy (except the weeks I have to raid my Susan B collection to buy gas before payday).
BTW- winter bills and gas prices have my customer base grumbling big time-my comment being an innocent "well, that's to be expected when you elect Oil Men to the White House"... I leave the rant to them, hee hee.
Clover, sowing the field with subtle seeds of discontent....
The stock market is clicking for only so many. I wish I were in a Senators office, then I could really make some money on the stock market. I mean geez, it must be just swell to have such an inside connection on bills and stuff.
Why weren't those calls tapped?
Clover's advice is 100% spot on. The matching funds aspect is basically free money. If your company offers you that you must take advantage of it!
Another way to think about the witholding is as a purchase of your future.
Oh, as a comparison, right now the cheap gas for me (between Boston and ten miles north of Boston along the coast) is 2.309/gal for regular unleaded. (That's the cheapest Hess price I've found at the moment.) I heard yesterday on the news that the avg. price for regular unleaded nationwide is something like 2.339/gal, so that would suggest perhaps that my area of the woods is either quite close to the national average or just slightly above it.
It would seem that when it comes to gasoline my part of Boston is not as expensive as I assumed.
- oddjob
A quote from "Signs Economic Commentary":
"The problems with Japanese, then U.S. stocks combined with a sharp rise in oil prices, may be a sign that the real players feel that the collapse is occurring. They have seen it coming for a while now, but there is always money to be made staying in the markets until the small investors get scared and everyone dumps."
Read it all at Signs of the Times
http://tinyurl.com/9zsjy
Thank you for your delightful answer. You do make finance a sexy subject. I am obviously not a financier- so I appreciated your comment.
I was not aware that you were involved with Big Brass- but I will encourage others to support that effort. I only recently added my blog.
Pretty new to bloggery.
Good morning, Wild Clover.
I am curious about what you see as far as the overall sentiment of the customers you encounter. In the parts of the country in which I spend my time these days, I see a complicated tapestry arising.
For the most part, the broad support that Bush had for so long has vanished as far as vocalization goes. Gone are the days when I heard "Bush this... Bush that..." just about everywhere. Most people are silent on him now. At the same time, however, there is a hard-core sub-population that has become considerably louder, almost belligerently so, in their talk. I have experienced this in several different situations. At a couple of all-night diners, although most people these days want to discuss among themselves anything but national politics, there always seems to be a table or two of loudly talking people who make it known to everyone within earshot that they're pro-Bush, pro-militancy (not pro-military, but it maquerades as such), pro-Right-wing policies. Everyone else seems to be somewhat uncomfortable with this. I've seen the same thing at both the state university and the community college at which I teach. These bluster busters are small in numbers, but it's almost like they're congregating to the conscious purpose of making people think they're noisy views are the dominant opinion. In one situation last week in the smoking area at the community college, their rabble became visibly embarrassing to just about everyone within earshot. People were actually moving away from the place where they were talking, which happened to be the only location where there's an overhead heat lamp. It was really interesting to watch, and the professor I was with (we had been standing on a nearby sidewalk chatting) noticed the dynamic, too.
As I noted, I sense a directed effort on the part of the noisy pro-Bush people at intimidation. No one seems to wish to counter or confront them; and part of the reason, it seems to me, is that a countervailing, concensus-driven opinion really hasn't formed among people who had been Bush supporters but now have many doubts about him and his leadership.
I might describe it, although perhaps incorrectly, as an erosional process in action. Unfortunately, the very fact that there isn't all that much direct declaration of opposition to him tells me that no public figures have yet to emerge who can provide the countervailing narrative most people like to have in setting forth their own positions. This, I think, is partly the fault of the Democrats, but it's also the fault of the mainstream media for not highlighting what some Democrats are saying with such force. Also, unfortunately, the Right-wing Republicans have done an amazingly effective job of nearly permanently destroying the credibility of such national figures as Al Gore and Hillary Clinton that I see no way in this part of the country for either of them to emerge as that narrative voice people need to give expression to their growing doubts.
Now, I would like to know what your thoughts are. Is what I have described above in any way what you're experiencing? You are obviously in a different part of the country, but you see a cross-section of American somewhat similar to what I see. Are people in general vocal in dismay at Bush, or is there that same, for lack of a better word, "confusion" about what to think of how things are going?
I certainly do not want to mount false hope of some emergent groundswell of disdain for Bush specifically and the Republicans in general. In my judgment, we just aren't there yet as a body electorate; but at the same time, we could go that way.
The Dark Wraith awaits your thoughts.
Good evening DW,
I see discontent. There's a few of my regulars that are definitely old time hippies that regularly come by and make nasty comments about the Bushistas, but for the most part only grumbling and discontent. A few outbursts that have surprised me from well-dressed manager/professor types suddenly going off about Bush and gas prices. I don't see the revolution starting the way I was seeing glimmers last spring when gas made its march upward.
I think there's a certain amount of resignation setting in, too many outrages, too many bills going higher, too little time for contemplation. I do see very few active Bush supporters being vocal, but then again, not much real reason unless you want to appear truly stupid. "Hey gas prices went down .06, heckuva job Bushie" just isn't a comment I hear :) However, the Bush discontent finds voice whenever the price goes up. Lots more folks enquiring about employment than usual, in many cases second jobs. Of course, they all want 9-5 M-F at a starting pay of $8 or more. No weekends or holidays. Good luck to them, we are open 6-11 or 6-12, 7 days a week, closed Christmas. Not much chance of them getting hired.
All and all, not much to report. The local paper LTTE seems to have a higher IQ of liberal/anti-Bush writing in than Bush defender, but this isn't a surprise. Either Bush's supporters are truly intellectually challenged and they are scaping the bottom to find letters to publish to keep the page "balanced", or our liberal media here is slanting the sample. I tend to believe the former, though there's the periodic rant to the paper about them and their liberal bias.
I have seen fewer Bush stickers, but fewer dem stickers to, so folks may just be cleaning their vehicles.
Unfortunately, I hang out with folks af the anti-Bush persuasion and my lack of social life (read-two kids) prevents me seeing mauch at the moment in the way of indicaters. My one thought was that if the republicans can't find a way to make heating bills and gas bills lower, the Dems can with small effort make them to blame and HAVE the next election cycle. But they have to get out there and keep pointing out Exxon's profits, republican oil ties, and the fact that the republicans have done nothing to help make our country more energy efficent or self sufficient despite 5 years to work on it with no opposition and decades of warning.
As an aside, the forum has been loading for me with the black print/white background for days. I go off a few moments to another window and come back and it is normal. Don't know if this relates to what Oddjob (I think) reported.
Oddjob has been having no problems lately, although I notice a change in font for the reporting of comments.
- oddjob
Good evening, Wild Clover.
I am grateful to you for reporting your observations. In some ways, you're describing things I, too, am seeing.
Your comment about "resignation" setting in struck me: I hadn't necessarily thought of it in those terms, but it might very well be ingraining itself in the people here in this part of the country, as well. That could be ominous for the Democrats: resignation can lead to an almost willful, spiteful apathy—a martyr complex, if you will: an "I'm screwed whoever gets into office" mode of thinking.
That would be bad because it could lead to low voter turnout, which traditionally means a win for the worst of the Republican candidates.
Your point about the way Democrats could win is right on the money. The question is one of whether or not the Democrats en masse will get off their high road to failure and instead get right down into the mud and rip ass.
That, of course, means the Democrats who do so can't be retracting and apologizing for their statements within an hour of making them.
What it's going to take to get them to play the vicious, unrelenting, unapologetic heavy-weights, I just don't know. I'm not even convinced that we have the technology to accomplish such a feat as a spine transplant.
But it's worth a try.
The Dark Wraith prepares the operating room.
And yes, OddJob, I am tweaking fonts ever so slightly.
I thought this was only for my own aesthetic pleasure, given that I thought no one could possibly notice such a small alteration.
Good Lord, first Old White Lady comments on it, and now you do, too. I swear, I have no intention of underestimating the acuity of the readers here, but I had no idea anyone would notice such things.
Actually, I'm doing this minor restructuring to make room at the bottoms of posts for several new items: I want to put in a link to a "printable page" version of at least some of my articles, and I want to put in some kind of a trackback system, although the latter is not as important as the former feature.
My efforts at making room are not meeting with the level of success I need. I didn't want to do so, but it looks like I'll have to go to a two-line post-script at the bottoms of the articles. For some reason, that's just sticking in my craw as "clunky" looking; but I'm trying to get used to the thought of it.
I don't know whether I will or not; and I won't add the features until I get happy with the two-line post-script or until I figure out another arrangement of the layout that does make me comfortable.
The Dark Wraith acknowledges that he is way to fussy for his own darned good.
(I'd noticed the font looked smaller, but I thought I just needed new glasses or maybe my eyes were tired ...I was just wondering tonight if the font had changed, it looked different somehow-rather pretty-but hadn't thought much about it until I saw the comments)
Hello, Dark Wraith. I haven't been around for a long time, I'd forgotten how informative your blog is, both your posts and all the comments as well.
In reference to your discussion with Wild Clover about public opinions on the Bush administration, and whether there is a creeping sense of resignation, may I offer another possible reason for the lack of vocal attacks on Bush supporters? Perhaps anyone smart enough to notice that the president ain't doin' so well are also smart enough to recognize a brick wall when they see one, and refrain from engaging it in political discourse. Just a thought.
Lorri Talley
LORRI TALLEY!
Good Lord, it's been months. I think I even asked if anyone knew what had become of you.
Okay, enough celebration.
I think there's a large grain of truth in your observation. The sense of powerlessness even among vocal activists and writers is so pervasive that I cannot imagine it not being a gripping motivation for silence among many others.
I have that sense of despair myself when the process just keeps pulling us further and further into a state other than that I see as right. Ask people, "Is the country on the wrong track?" and most would answer, "Yes, it is." But it seems to me that the question they would then ask of me would be, "But what's the great alternative? Do you have it? Do you know what politicians offer it?"
Tonight, now that the Senate has voted to limit debate on the appointment of Samuel Alito, Jr., to the U.S. Supreme Court, my answer would be thus: "The political process has failed. That means only one solution remains."
We won't embrace that solution, so the country will continue its course into the blackness.
With that in mind, perhaps silent resignation is not such a bad way to deal with our era, after all.
The Dark Wraith will not be silent, but will instead grumble loudly.