The Lord's Burning Rain

...It seems like this whole town's insane;
On the thirty-first floor
A gold-plated door
Won't keep out the Lord's burning rain.

--Gram Parsons
"Sin City"

It's with some amusement and no small degree of schadenfreude that one contemplates the elaborate and painful contortions of ideologues trying to paint the ongoing economic meltdown and the onset of the second Great Depression in rosy hues.

For example, there's Donald Luskin's recent op-ed in the Washington Post in which he asserts that "Things today just aren't that bad. Sure, there are trouble spots in the economy, as the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and jitters about Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers, amply demonstrate. And unemployment figures are up a bit, too. None of this, however, is cause for depression -- or exaggerated Depression comparisons."

No less an authority than George W. Bush himself has called the catastrophic revelation of bottomless bad debt now paralyzing the economic system "a crisis;" 2.6 million people were thrown out of work last year, and the best this spinning dervish can come up with is that unemployment is "up a bit?" However, before you ask whether he's nuts or just stupid, ask yourself whether he's got an agenda. "Show me where a man gets his cornbread," said Mark Twain, "and I'll show you where he gets his politics."

He not only has one, but there's even a name for it: "agnotology."

The word was coined by Stanford professor science history Robert Proctor, and Wired's Clive Thompson (via Barry Ritholtz) explains it this way:

Derived from the Greek root agnosis, it is “the study of culturally constructed ignorance.”

As Proctor argues, when society doesn’t know something, it’s often because special interests work hard to create confusion. Anti-Obama groups likely spent millions insisting he’s a Muslim; church groups have shelled out even more pushing creationism. The oil and auto industries carefully seed doubt about the causes of global warming. And when the dust settles, society knows less than it did before.

“People always assume that if someone doesn’t know something, it’s because they haven’t paid attention or haven’t yet figured it out,” Proctor says. “But ignorance also comes from people literally suppressing truth—or drowning it out—or trying to make it so confusing that people stop caring about what’s true and what’s not.”

Agnotology defined, then, is "Culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth."

Please note that Donald Luskin is employed as chief investment officer for Trend Macrolytics LLC, a consulting firm providing investment strategies, macroeconomics forecasting, and research for institutional investors, if there are any left. He's also a frequent contributor to National Review Online, according to Wikipedia.

My advice is to pay absolutely no attention to these powdered and painted-up whores working the streets of our financial districts. They've already had their chance, and having been in charge for the past eight years, look what they've done. "By their fruits you shall know them" says the Gospel verse, and you can smell the fruits they left behind before you see them.

And their agnotological mumblings no longer carry any weight; the public in its misery and anxiety finally has their number, and the only people left as ignorant as Don Luskin only remain that way through acts of supreme will.

Meanwhile, despite the sanguine outlook maintained by clowns and trained seals like Luskin, the Dow Jones average sank another 2.5 percent this week, and is down eight percent for the first 23 days of the new year.

Illustration by Max Winni.