This image is cropped from a picture in an article by photojournalist Nina Berman, Gun Rally Fashion Then and Now. She went to the Come and Take it Rally in San Antonio last month. It’s one of these relatively common rallies where people walk around with loaded guns. The article is really interesting because she’s able to put it into perspective having photographed similar events in the early 1990s. And things really have changed, although I can’t make up my mind if it was obvious or not.

She notes that in the 1990s, there was the occasional person dressed up as Uncle Sam or a confederate soldier. But now that kind of stuff is completely overshadowed by the “happy consumers flaunting their bling.” And in describing it that way, she isn’t just talking about the “red bustier” and “matching lipstick” of the young woman in the picture here. She’s also talking about the “black rifle across her chest.” She even writes, “At the Alamo that day, I saw a whole new generation of gun owners who wore their weapons like Madison Avenue socialites wear their Hermes bags.”

Guns can be surprisingly cheap. But most of the guns you see on display are pretty expensive. And all the gun aficionados (you might call them “nuts”) are very eager to tell you how much they spent on this or that gun. As is well reported, fewer and fewer Americans own guns even while the total number of guns goes up. Of the people I’ve know, they either own no guns or they own a lot. And here I’m not even talking about the five or six that a hunter might reasonably have. People often have twenty, third, forty or more guns—collections worth tens of thousands of dollars.

So I think Berman is definitely onto something. Men have their reasons for stockpiling guns. And I understand them. I’m as much aware of the dangers of governments as they are. (However, they are mostly clueless about so many other threats to their life and liberty.) But after a while, the gun collection stops being about any concerns for one’s safety. If you have forty guns in a box in your closet, you’re a consumer—no more or less than a grammar school kid collecting Garbage Pail Kids.

But when you dress up like a Captain America ripoff and strap your assault rifle on with its “Don’t Tread on Me” bumper sticker, you aren’t protesting. You are strutting your stuff. You are showing off. And that’s great! Just keep that bolt blocked by that colorful plastic straw. Safety first!

The days of the Senate filibuster may be numbered—at least nomination filibusters. I say this because Jonathan Bernstein seems to have given up on saving the filibuster. He knows more about the filibuster than anyone I read. And for the last couple of years, he’s always claimed that not only is the filibuster a good thing, but that it wasn’t going anywhere. He always thought that the two sides would work out their differences. But he concluded his article today, “I’m not as optimistic as I was last time that they’re going to strike a deal.”

More than predictions, however, Bernstein doesn’t seem to think that the Democrats have any choice but to destroy the filibuster. The whole article is a response to those who are wondering what the Democrats are thinking in all of this. According to him that’s clear, “It seems to me that Democrats will have little choice but to threaten majority-imposed rules change and, if necessary, carry out that threat.” Given this, why are the Republicans acting in such a way as to force a response?

He offers four theories, but I don’t find them particularly compelling. For example, he claims that some Republicans may actually want the filibuster destroyed but they don’t want to have to take the political hit by doing it later themselves. I don’t see that. For one thing, “What political hit?!” In 2005, even though filibuster use was actually down from where the Republicans had driven it, they claimed that the filibuster was “unprecedented.” What’s more, I don’t see the Republicans particularly concerned about what people say when they are in power. You see: I lived through the Bush Jr years.

The one theory I most believe is that the Republicans just don’t think the Democrats will do anything. And it isn’t at all clear that they are wrong. There are still Democrats in the Senate who somehow think they that they can maintain this antiquated and anti-democratic institution. My Senator Diane Feinstein continues to be appalled by the behavior of the Republicans, remarking two weeks ago, “The judiciary is too important to play partisan games with. And that’s exactly what’s going on here.” But when it comes down to it, she demurs.

But above all, I don’t think the Republicans are thinking anything at all. They are just playing with the power that they have, figuring that they can always work out a last minute deal with the Democrats. But Bernstein may be right that it is different this time. I saw Harry Reid as angry as I have ever seen him during the last battle. And this time it is so much worse. The Republican use of the filibuster reminds me very much of high school jocks picking on nerds. They do it because they can and because it is in their natures to be dicks. Why are the Republicans filibustering? Because that’s what they do. And if it brings an end to the terrible practice, that’s just great.

Afterword

Bernstein is a hardheaded political scientist, but on this issue, he has been something of a Pollyanna. Rather than saying the filibuster is just flawed, he’s hoped that the Republicans would come to behave properly. But as I showed in January, over the past 50 years, Republicans Caused All Filibuster Abuse. Their nature is to push whatever political advantage they have. The Democrats seem to behave in accordance with norms. Republicans always try to expand them. That isn’t going to change.

Paul Krugman offered the graph above that I think is really important. What it shows is the economic recovery in Europe following the beginning of the 2008 crisis and the beginning of the Great Depression. The results are stark: even though the downturn isn’t nearly as bad, Europe is only doing as well now as then. Even more important, the trend was great then and terrible now.

It isn’t a completely valid comparison. But it is something that conservatives everywhere should be ashamed of. What’s so dangerous about it is that more and more we hear conservatives making the most specious of arguments to explain it. According to this line of thought, the new economy ain’t like the old economy. There is a new normal and it sucks, so there’s just nothing we can do. This is brought up most of the time to explain why unemployment is so high. It isn’t that we are in a prolonged depression; it is that companies aren’t hiring because there aren’t enough mechanical engineers who are willing to work for $12 and no benefits.

No one has done better work on the “structural unemployment” canard than Dean Baker. But it just takes a bit of thought to show how wrong the idea is. If I had a business and I knew that I could make a killing if only I had more mechanical engineers, then I would hire them. To do that, I would offer more money to people who came to work with me. This would cause a pay spike in people who have the right skills—in this case, good mechanical engineering skills.

We don’t see this in the data at all. There is no area of employment where wages are going way up. Instead, we get anecdotal evidence that this or that employer just can’t find qualified people. And in every case, what find is the “$12 mechanical engineer” problem. As at any time, employers are desperate to hire employees who will work for far below the going rate. So there is no structural unemployment—just employers who are trying to cut costs so they can make more money.

Let me address one other side of this issue. I can hear libertarians complaining that the mechanical engineers are clearly not worth more than $12 to this employer. I agree! But clearly mechanical engineers are worth a lot more than that to most employers. So the problem here is that this employer either doesn’t have good enough ideas to justify hiring mechanical engineers or is too inefficient to afford to hire them to implement his good ideas. Regardless, libertarians shouldn’t turn him into a hero. He’s just one of those whinny takers they hate so much.

What is behind what’s going on in Europe (and to a lesser extent here) is that the economy lacks demand. It is entirely understandable that people in the 1930s didn’t understand what was going on and so responded to the depression in many bad ways. But before the crisis of 2008, it was unthinkable that our response to such a crisis would be even as bad as it was in the 1930s. I remember sitting in economics class in college and thinking, “I’m glad that we won’t have to live through that again!” I was assuming that we would use the combination of fiscal and monetary policy that easily fixes such problems. What I wasn’t prepared for was that the actual science of economics wouldn’t matter in the least. The depression goes on because there are many rich and powerful people who want it to go on.

Update (15 November 2015 3:01 pm)

Krugman wrote a followup to his piece:

I run into this all the time, “Roosevelt only got us out of the Depression by getting us into World War II.” These people just aren’t thinking; they’re grasping at straws to justify what they just “know.”

This morning Capt Fogg brought my attention to yet another faux right wing scandal, Liberterrorism? The whole story is very simple: JPMorgan Chase is putting a limit of overseas money transfers for their small business account transfers—$50,000 per month. But this isn’t an actual limit on “small businesses”; it is a limit on “small business accounts.” It’s like a bank that says you can only make 5 account transfers on your economy personal checking account. If you want to do more, you pay for a more expensive checking account. You can get more details on the kerfuffle at Forbes, No, JPM Isn’t Banning International Wire Transfers, No Limits on Withdrawals Either.

I’m not sure that Capt Fogg is quite right to blame this right wing freak out on libertarians, however. It’s true that most of the conspiracy nuts do think of themselves as libertarians. There’s a natural link that runs the other way too (libertarians tend to gravitate toward conspiracies). Most libertarian thought is built on a misguided use of the slippery slope. If the government can demand taxes from people, what can’t they demand? Murder?! But in cases like JPMorgan Chase, most libertarians are especially not concerned.

One of my biggest complaints about libertarians is that they don’t actually care about liberty. They define it in such a way that one can end up a slave as long as one is not a slave to the government. I can’t tell you how many times libertarians have told me that corporate power over individuals doesn’t matter because the corporations don’t have armies. They can’t force you to do as they want. This is a bizarre claim. It assumes that threatened murder is the only kind of coercion that matters. (For more on this, see my article, Property Rights.)

So the idea that JPMorgan Chase might be abusing their customers is no problem at all. The standard libertarian argument goes like this: if the customers don’t like it, they can go with a different bank; if there is no other bank offering it, a great market opportunity will open up and it will become available; and even if not, they don’t have a gun to your head! I actually accept that argument in this case. The problems start when they talk about healthcare or a living wage.

Where this story really impacts with the libertarians is with the Federal Reserve. I’ll admit, what the Fed does is kind of mysterious. But for libertarians, it turns into a kind of Dan Brown novel. For these people, rather than trying to keep the economic system working efficiently, the people at the Fed are just trying to cause inflation to destroy the wealth of the “makers.” (Insert evil laugh here.) The fact that if anything, the Fed too much looks out for the interests of the rich, doesn’t seem to occur to them. As Matt Yglesias said, “If the unemployment and inflation rates were reversed, would the Fed do something about it?” Yes it would! Because it cares a whole lot more about those with money than those without it.

Forbes noted, “The fear is that banks, and indirectly, the federal government have too much control over individuals’ money which sits in the form of deposits.” Of course, this has nothing whatsoever to do with this change at JPMorgan Chase. But it feeds into what is overwhelming ignorance on the part of libertarians about how our monetary system works. Regardless of what conspiracies libertarians may believe in, all their thinking is distorted by focusing on imaginary or at least marginal problems and ignoring huge liberty-killing problems that we face right now.