Pat Oliphant for May 09, 2012

Ok, Oliphant is a political cartoon institution and all that, but what is this supposed to be? Looks like a typical American myopic perspective.

maybe he’s been to the bake sale in Massachusetts?

Right on, Pat!

BUT, you missed labeling the cyclist bearing the cornucopia of goodies as “U$.”

Other than that, good job!

@saywhatwhat: If we’re so myopic, why are you living here and not Europe? Put you $$$ where your mouth is? Switch to the Euro accompanied with a move. I’m sure you’ll be much happier without having to put up with our egocentric/myopic views and be much more comfortable living in THEIR ‘nanny’ states.

An Oliphant with no commentator character?

@Ransom – good catch! Miss that little guy.I read this as stagnant Euro, stagnant economy and a clean sweep of management just as bounty as about to be delivered.

Let’s see how many trillions or quadrillions of Euros it will take to spend themselves into prosperity.

I always thought the Euro would prove to be unworkable since countries are NOT states or provinces, and the differences would be too much to bridge.

Think the Euro is dying, not sleeping. The economy is stagnant. And the politicians have been swept out.

That’s all I got.

The Euro is near death. Myopic austerity proponents are swept out, so that better times may soon arrive.The little commentator is just outside of the panel, avoiding the dust from the broom.

Thanks! You beat me to it. Also, the “commentator character” appears to be speechless – much like I am.

Bill: I’d be delighted to move to Europe. They don’t want Americans, for the same reasons we don’t want Mexicans — they consider us a backwards country filled with poor, desperate people who are willing to work for nothing just to get out of the place they live. And they’re right.

Hmm, history of U.S. involvement in Europe. Just read the second “Hunger Games” book, in the first, the cornucopia had food, clothing and items to survive, given by “the Capitol”. In the second, it contained only weapons- that strikes me as indeed where our “conservative” aid has gone.

Oliphant suggests the Euro is on its deathbed because its austerity supporters lost their elections. An economic recovery will follow.

I personally believe that few if any countries will leave the Euro. Can Greece sell bonds denominated in drachmas? They can pay back the bonds, but only in depreciated currency. A better deal for Greece than the bondholder.

After reading all the comments and looking at the cartoon again, I still don’t know. But maybe it’s not myopic, just inscrutable and the deeper meaning got past me. The comments are interesting and Jack got closer than I did. Hey, a cornucopia by any other name…but Bill, you’re not going to convince anyone that it’s coming from “U$”. And by the way, I’ve lived in Germany for some years. No place is perfect, but I kind of like it here. “Nanny state”? That’s silly propaganda.

Isaac Asimov wrote an essay in 1974 collected into OF MATTERS GREAT AND SMALL. I can’t remember the title of the essay. He suggested that the United States (drawing on prior European ideas) formerly provided the idea of political freedom and liberty through government processes as its positive influence in the world. These, with new techniques for industry and production worked together to make the U.S. powerful and strong in the best sense.

Other nations in the quest for world influence sold their own products and own versions of government that worked only in the short-term pragmatic sense (various forms of Communism and Fascism). During this time, Big Business began to sell the idea of Consumerism. In the Cold War we began to use enthusiasm for Consumerism to sell the idea of Affluence in contrast to the gray structure of (deceptively) efficient Communism. It seemed the quickest way to maintain our influence.

The U.S. was enormously prosperous after WWII and was able to do this together with Western allies through force of finances. Eventually, opposing government philosophies could not compete. Look further ahead we can see that this culminated as Reagan outspent the Soviets, helping bring them down. Taken all together, it was perhaps a Pyrrhic victory.

Asimov suggested this, too, would happen. His point was that affluence was and is more glamorous and shallow, and therefore most immediately impressive, and will work for a limited period of time. The problem is, true Liberty is a constant strength-building exercise able to weather crises and change for the better; while Affluence fluctuates according to economic cycles. According to Asimov, eventually the U.S. would meet worsening economic conditions, worse than ever before, and having depended to a much greater extent to sell Affluence, would lose practice in true Liberty.

It seems we are finally meeting extreme crisis conditions through all the current energy and financial problems and can’t expect our former partner countries to help themselves alone. Having embraced economic techniques and societies of unrealistic growth and finite energy sources, the basis to prosperity gradually reveals itself to be weak.

The Western model needs to be corrected to follow an improved path and persuade others along. But has our international leadership lost ability to deal with things as they have become? It seems they are most concerned to be re-elected and to force others to solve the problems later.

I explained this badly, but it made sense then and even more sense now. Read the original article if you can find it.

This is a wonderful predictive cartoon. I plan to save it for a couple of years just so it will be available for the absolutely certainty that Europe will not see the Horn of Plenty via even more socialism. It will make a fine paper crow for Oliphant.

I don’t get it. I get the Europe house part of it, what with a sleeping currency and the economy just loafing along (er, right?).

But who is house cleaning? And what does the Horn of Plenty mean.