Politics & Power Quote by Sidney Blumenthal

Blumenthal’s line lands because it mocks a familiar political magic trick: turning an arena of human choices into an act of nature. Calling the economy “like the weather” isn’t just metaphor, it’s a deliberate downgrade of responsibility. Weather happens; nobody is to blame, nobody can really be credited, and the best you can do is pack an umbrella and stop complaining. In that frame, deregulation, tax policy, labor law, central banking, and trade rules become background climate patterns rather than contested decisions with winners and losers.

The jab is aimed at a conservative posture that treats “the market” as both sacred and self-correcting, a system whose turbulence is regrettable but ultimately neutral. If a factory town collapses, that’s a storm front, not a policy result. If inequality spikes, that’s seasonal variation, not design. The subtext is moral: naturalizing the economy is a way to launder power. It shields lawmakers and benefactors from accountability while scolding the public for expecting intervention.

Blumenthal’s journalist’s instinct is to expose the rhetorical move, not to write an economics seminar. The economy is, of course, full of emergent dynamics that no one fully controls; conservatives aren’t inventing complexity. But the line works because it highlights how “complexity” gets deployed selectively: the economy is “automatic” when people want to cut social programs or regulate less, and suddenly “manageable” when it’s time to bail out banks, defend property, or protect incumbents. The weather metaphor isn’t analysis; it’s alibi.