The Failed Prophet

God, I am an idiot.

Back in my last post, I was of the opinion that the Tea Party was on its last knees, after their mediocre showing in the elections. Would that have been so.

Since then, we've seen the ascendancy of Teabagger idiocy to the mainstream of American life, and nothing brought this to me more fully than the following story.

Last Wednesday, I was driving downtown in the morning, flipping around the radio dial, when I come across some morning show on money. Okay, fair enough. Problem is, the guest is asserting that "they", those shadowy you-know-whos, want inflation to happen in our economy. Then he asserted that in Roman times the Empire was suffering under such debt that Caesar came up with idea of clipping Roman coins, taking the bits and coining new money with them, thus debasing the Roman currency just like our dollar is being debased by overprinting!

Yeah, the BS shields went up right then with a clang that could be heard for miles. The "stuff in ancient times is just like what's happening now" routine is never a good sign.

Let's see - from there we proceeded to positive comments about Paul "The Maggot" Ryan's budget plans, the idea that South Carolina should use foreign gold & silver coins as a secondary currency backed by metals (that's never a good sign, either), the assertion that Bill Gates doesn't keep his money in a coffee can in the backyard, nosiree it's invested in America creating American jobs (has this guy called Microsoft Customer Service lately?), the comment that America's debt is now greater than the entire supply of money worldwide, and a realm of generic wingnut money-crankishness that has escaped my mind since.

The best part - when I got in the car later and turned the radio back on, it was a local "easy listening" station. Serious WTF? material, kind of like turning on Nicktoons and seeing "The Michelle Bachmann Show" or something.

So the game is up. It's over. Stick a fork in us, we're done. The culture has been infiltrated with Teabaggers and it'll be a long time before we can ever get back to sanity.

Oh, and the Roman coin clipping thing? Not so much, evidently:

Almost every silver siliqua in the hoard has had its edge clipped to some degree. This is typical of Roman silver coin finds of this period in Britain, although clipped coins are very unusual through the rest of the Roman Empire.[42] The clipping process invariably leaves the imperial portrait on the front of the coin intact, but often damages the mint mark, inscription, and the image on the obverse.[42]

The reasons for the clipping of coins are controversial. Possible explanations include fraud, a deliberate attempt to maintain a stable ratio between gold and silver coins, or an official attempt to provide a new source of silver bullion while maintaining the same number of coins in circulation.[42]