Do you believe what Elizabeth Warren believes?

A rather tough childhood and family life have formed the views of Elizabeth Warren. While she is no doubt sincere, I think she is way off base and a bit warped (even paranoid) in her views, what do you think? Here is an example:

Her biggest adult fight has been against the banks, against what she saw as their rapacious exploitation of the poor and vulnerable. The crucial distinction Warren makes is this one: It’s not just social conditions like globalization and technological change that threaten the middle class. It’s an active conspiracy by the rich and powerful. The game is rigged. The proper response is not just policy-making; it’s indignation and combat. David Brooks writing in the New York Times, Warren Can Win December 16, 2014

Elizabeth Warren is a purveyor of radical populism as Daniel Henninger recently put it and it is as dangerous as anything on the radical right.

If you are told long enough and passionately enough that everything difficult in life is someone else’s fault and you are a victim with little or no responsibility, you will believe it. Then you will stop thinking and trying and doing and let someone else do it for you. In other words, you will be used. And you will vote only for people who promise to do more for you and eventually you will be fully dependent on someone else thinking for you.

Warren’s favorite targets are banks and financial institutions. Clearly banks took advantage of the housing and mortgage markets to aggregate faulty investment vehicles. It’s also clear banks charge high interest rates on credit cards, but let’s not forget banks are not living entities, they are organizations made up of individuals each with a certain degree of intelligence, integrity and motivation. People do dumb things.

While we are on that subject (dumb that is), how about the real causes of the problems Warren rants about?

Who encouraged subprime lending, who took out mortgages they had no hope of paying, who borrowed against the equity in their homes to maintain their desired lifestyle? Who uses credit cards with abandon and then pays them off at high interest rates? Who leases a car they could not afford if required to pay cash or take a loan? Who accumulates student loan debt for a degree with zero economic value and then struggles with paying the loan and wants it forgiven or the rates retroactively lowered?

Well, you might say as some of the Warrenesque might say, these folks were talked into doing these things, mislead, taken advantage of, subject to a conspiracy; a rigged game.

Now if that is true as Elizabeth Warren passionately believes and wants everyone to believe, we better throw up our hands and simply admit the vast majority of Americans, at least those under age 65, are exceedingly naive, perhaps greedy, stupid and are, in fact, susceptible to “rapacious exploitation.”

This means we need to listen to the far left that is comprised of far smarter, more sophisticated individuals who can protect us and lead us to the promised land where being dumb no longer matters, because they will do all the required thinking.

For ever and ever there will be people out there trying to take advantage, to trick you, game the system, who are driven by greed. Sometimes they work for big institutions, sometimes they are your neighbor. That’s why you need to be aware, to be informed, to plan, to look beyond tomorrow, to ask questions and consider the consequences of your decisions … and you don’t need people who truly believe you are stupid and vulnerable doing the thinking for you … I hope 😢

P.S. It is globalization and technological change that threaten the middle class because they and our educational systems are not adapting quickly enough.

I have a deal for Senator Lizzy, I will vote for you when you give this speech.