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."
But we arent fine. A generation is vastly underemployed, if they are lucky. We are cutting the mooring lines that keep people attached to the middle class. The Democrats have permitted this slow march to destruction. They have presented no coherent narrative, and keep conceding ground. Now it's our best-case policy to just restore post-sequester spending.
We are stuck in the world of anecdotal truth. In that world, models dont matter and statistics are irrelevant. Read the breathless, crazed comments on Paul Krugman's blog posts and they talk about a "s**t-o-meter" as if it's a real thing and a worthy response to the thoughtful musings of a Nobel Laureate.
My fervent hope is that the ultimate work of these Right-Wing bombthrowers isnt a real revolution in this country. This country works because people seem to be sufficiently invested in society, have too much to lose, to rise up. When the population no longer has anything to lose, there is no telling what happens next.
A very dangerous game.