At the very depths of the catastrophe in 2008, I went with my father to the best (and only decent!) restaurant in Toledo, an expensive steak house. The place was mobbed, with a 45-min wait, and the bar was SRO. So he looks around and says, "What recession?"
We have managed to hide the pain in this society. We have allowed people to live their lives in a suburban cocoon, never seeing unemployment, homelessness. First the Great Recession, then destructive austerity at the state level, then the "turn to the deficit" in 2010. Now the sequester, then a federal govt shutdown, and next is default. At each stage the right wing can look around and say, "See, we are still fine."
