Dow Triumphalism

While checking the stats on his Ameritrade account, Larry Kudlow experiences a sudden rush of blood to the groin:

And what’s more, this global stock market boom signifies a major defeat for al Qaeda and all the terrorist jihadists who seek to destroy capitalism and our way of life. The spread of prosperity across the globe cannot tell a lie: The terrorists are on the wrong side, they are on the losing side, and their side will be defeated. Freedom and capitalism is moving full steam ahead. It will ultimately crush the evil, totalitarian jihadists.

Well, goddamn. I know we’re only six years into the Global War Against People Who Resemble in Some Vague Way the People Who Carried Out the 9-11 Attacks, but is it too much to ask that the lords of wingnuttia begin their exaltations with marginally plausible assumptions about the motives of our putative enemies? I suppose if you’re especially prone to re-telling cold war narratives, with “jihadists” or “Islamofacsists” substituting for “the Rooskies,” then I guess it makes complete sense to insist that the PWRSVWPWCO9-11A are aiming to “destroy capitalism and our way of life.” Otherwise, I can’t imagine how you’d arrive at that sort of evidence-free assertion. Then again, it takes a unique species of hack to argue that rising stock prices are a better measure of the war’s success than, say, the hundreds of thousands of corpses it’s so far produced, or the fact that nearly everyone else on the planet sees it for the goat fuck it truly is.