Is neoliberalism a mental illness?

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Thomas P. Friedman, better known as Thomas L. Friedman, Mystax Fatuitatis, asks, How bizarre is this presidential campaign? So bizarre that there are candidates who disagree with Thomas L. Friedman on the question of what you would pick as America's three greatest sources of strength if somebody asked you to write them down on a sheet of blank paper. That's pretty fucking bizarre!

What are America's three greatest sources of strength if you write them down on a sheet of blank paper? According to Friedman,

• a culture of entrepreneurship;
• an ethic of pluralism; and
• quality of our governing institutions

I find it bizarre that Friedman lives in a world where you can imagine people passing you a sheet of blank paper and asking you to write down your Trifecta picks on America's three greatest sources of strength instead of something like "With best wishes to Estelle, Thomas L. Friedman".

So

Donald Trump is running against pluralism. Bernie Sanders shows zero interest in entrepreneurship and says the Wall Street banks that provide capital to risk-takers are involved in “fraud,” and Ted Cruz speaks of our government in the same way as the anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist, who says we should shrink government “to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” (Am I a bad person if I hope that when Norquist slips in that bathtub and has to call 911, no one answers?)

I also find it bizarre that 36 years after Reagan was elected president Friedman should think it bizarre to have a major candidate toeing the Norquist line. It is pretty weird, but at this point we ought to be getting used to it. It's what they do.

That's not a bad little wisecrack about the bathtub, I gotta say, Tom. To be honest. Much improved from the original version in a 2012 CNN interview of Alan Simpson by Chris Matthews: 

“So how do you deal with someone who comes to stop government? … Grover wandering the earth in his white robe saying he wants to drown government in the bathtub. I hope he slips in there with it.”

The Daily Caller, Twitchy, the Washington Examiner, and John J. Miller at the National Review among who knows how many others are beside themselves with pious indignation at the spectacle of Friedman's hateful, violent fantasies. They're crowing over the exposed stupidity of those fools! fools! who think of Friedman as "the good liberal". "Still think there's such a thing as a 'good liberal'? That man wants to slaughter us in our bathtubs, Ethel!" It's funny because crusty old conservative Simpson's version really was kind of gratuitously violent, and I don't recall anybody calling him out.

I can't say it's bizarre that Friedman needs to balance his picture on both sides by giving Sanders the same weight as Cruz and Trump together, because of course he does. But bothsiderism is really a kind of mental illness, isn't it? The symmetry obsessions of OCD?

There's something truly Friedman-crazy, too, in the argument with which he constructs the symmetry: Cruz opposes government institutions, Trump opposes American-style ethnic pluralism, Sanders ignores entrepreneurialism. How is that exactly the same thing?

Because I thought the American entrepreneur was supposed to be this heroically independent risk taker who needs government to get out of his way as he transforms society through the sheer force of his drive to innovate. Not that I believe that myself. I think one of those "things that made America great" is the history of government over most of the period from 1788 to 1920  and 1932 to 1980 actively creating an environment in which entrepreneurs could flourish, investing in infrastructure and education and coddling them with the protective tariff. Sanders represents this tradition far more than any of the other candidates. Indeed, one of the things in his program I object to is the equivalent of clinging to the protective tariff at a stage in our history when it doesn't make sense any more, his opposition to any and all trade agreements—

Q: So basically, there's never been a single trade agreement this country's negotiated that you've been comfortable with?

SANDERS: That's correct.

Great for the US in the 1840s, not really what we need right now. We'd like to take Sweden and Germany as models for health care provision, why not try taking them as models for eliminating trade barriers? What creates jobs is export markets!

And you'd think Friedman would have been perfectly comfortable making exactly that argument (Sanders's opposition to trade deals is bad for US entrepreneurs)—but no (perhaps because that would spoil the symmetry since Clinton and Trump are opposing a trade deal too).

Instead, he wants to talk about banks! Sanders hurts entrepreneurs by (1) ignoring them, and (2) accusing banks of fraud! Or rather "fraud" in scare quotes, because Friedman doesn't even want to hint that it might really exist. The way you might want to say, you know, Pat Robertson is afraid of "witches". What's that about?

Just off the top of my head, go ahead and tell me if I've got this wrong, I thought the history of US banking since the banking deregulation and the collapse of the tech-stock bubble in 1999-2001 was that they stopped investing in entrepreneurs in favor of fraud—creating imaginary value, with the collusion of corrupt bond rating agencies and accounting firms, and building it into a pyramid of contracts on $650 trillion dollars that didn't exist? And in the eight years since that scheme blew up, they still haven't gone back to the traditional investment business and they're still trading in CDOs? So it seems to me if they'd stop committing fraud it would be good for entrepreneurs. (Another of the things that "made America great" might be the evolution of that concept of "rule of law".)

Friedman, though, isn't worried about that. He's worried that you could harm entrepreneurs if you hurt bankers' feelings. Don't say "fraud"! Don't anger them! It's magical thinking, really, treating bankers as malignant spirits that need to be placated. And magical thinking, you know, is another mark of OCD.