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One of the results of severe economic suffering is the desire to blame, and demagogues on both sides of the political spectrum successfully take advantage of this. In retrospect, it's a miracle that FDR was able to keep this country out of the hands of extremists (but then the conservatists don't think he did - they think he **was** an extremist).
In the unlikely event that we do go into a depression, the conservatists and Christianist right are way out in front in terms of blame. If we suffer a real crash, we can expect a cadre of modern-day Father Coughlins ("Bill O'Reilly, white courtesy telephone . . .") to have the run of the airwaves. It will turn out that our economic woes were not the result of reckless tax cutting and an elective $1/2 trillion war, but of abortion, gay marriage, and socialized medicine.
