One of my "friends" on Facebook posted this:



I could certainly flame back, but attempting to discuss Keynsian economics with a committed Republican partisan is an exercise in banging my head on a pointy rock. (And this guy happens to have a PhD in psychology and teach that subject at a regional public university. Despite the simplistic text, he's no fool.)

Instead, I'm attempting to back off a bit. I certainly never was friendly with this chap back in the day. Instead, I'm trying (really, really trying) to see this as a window into the mind of the modern American right-wing partisan. He's at least right that "hope and change" was a flash in the pan, but he clearly fails to understand cause and effect in the political process. The core question is whether there's any line of argument that would matter in this discussion. Is it ever going to happen that a guy like this (apparently smart but also apparently deeply in thrall with the propaganda of his party) comes to understand anything of the way that political processes work?