The Stupidity of Another Pious Governor

The gentleman pictured is the governor of Texas, Republican Rick Perry, and he believes that tying his political office to his fondness for prayer will prevent the second recession into which the United States is unavoidably falling.

No offense, but calling a spade a spade, what the Texan governor summoned forth on Saturday is stupidity (according to the dictionary: difficulty and extreme slowness in understanding things).

Perry is stupid because he doesn’t understand that S&P’s decision to reduce the United States’ triple-A rating for the first time in history was because of the humiliating performance by politicians in the management of the crisis and the negotiations on the debt. He doesn’t understand, for example, that the refusal of his party to raise taxes on the wealthiest (who are so rich anyway that they would hardly notice) means punishing even more those of the middle and working classes with new social spending cuts. He doesn’t understand, as a very angry China said this weekend that Americans are “addicted” to debt, squandering trillions of dollars on foolish things like an intolerably high defense budget; a stupid expense that hasn’t helped to win the war against the Taliban.

I don’t doubt that Perry’s rally was a hit. I imagine thousands of people falling into the stupidity of praying for the salvation of the United States, as if God had nothing else to worry about. Why didn’t they pray that He end the famine in the Horn of Africa? Why didn’t they pray that speculators at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange stop inflating basic food prices? Have these Texans ever prayed for the prisoners condemned to death by Governor Perry, the death penalty’s biggest fan? Will Governor Perry pray to the same God who commands “Thou shalt not kill?”

We will never know the answers to these questions. The best we can do is to pay attention to Wall Street’s opening this week to see if it falters or not. We hope it doesn’t, for the well-being of the global economy, although we’ll have to put up with the image of Governor Perry and his followers falling to their knees and thanking Heaven for divine intervention.

If it comes to the extreme of having to see new photos of the pious Texas governor recast as a preacher, I hope at least to see one of his fellow countrymen standing before him, shouting, “It’s not religion! It’s the economy, stupid!”