For the past two years, I’ve heard people say something new. Something new and troubling and chilling. They say in conversations, "For the first time in my life, I’m afraid for our country."
For the most part these aren’t partisans or even particularly political people. They are intelligent, engaged, worldly, successful in their own fields and, usually, of a certain age. Old enough to remember the nation that America once was, not so long ago. They read. They’re not talking about government terror alerts or that taxes might go up on the richest 1 percent of Americans. The statement comes up without prompting or coaching, and the words are almost always the same: "For the first time in my life, I’m afraid for our country."
In Republican John Sidney McCain III’s "home town" of Phoenix last week, I talked to people who are so upset about this election, they can hardly do their work. So upset that enough Americans will be misled by the Fox News echo chamber, passively being fed propaganda — won’t vote, under any circumstances, for a black man. Again, I hear this not from Obama campaign ops, but just intelligent people who have been paying attention.
To list all the specifics would take days. You know the high points: most of us are doing worse now than eight years ago, and it’s becoming clear that the next generation may well see lower living standards that its predecessor. Has that ever happened in America? We’re bogged down in an amorphous, endless "war on terror" that has been used as an excuse to shred the Constitution. We torture. The gap in income between the richest and poorest Americans is at its highest level since 1929. We’re doing nothing about global warming or peak oil. We’re the world’s largest debtor, taking on more to clean up — if it works — some of the swindles that constitute the capital markets. The health care system is not only broken but becoming lethal. Our education system is failing. Pensions, job security, well-paying jobs at all — falling away. How much time do you have?
But then I see the new meme out there. In my job as a columnist for the Seattle Times, I’ve been writing about the terrible and utterly needless demise of Washington Mutual. There’s plenty of blame to go around, but the big villains were the well-compensated top execs that took on so many risky loans; the chiselers on Wall Street that realized they could make money by bundling the mortgages into securities and selling them to clueless investors; the brainos who developed derivatives that even they didn’t understand (Warren Buffet: weapons of financial mass destruction), and Alan "pump up the housing bubble" Greenspan. (And why the hell is his wife Andrea Mitchell covering the "rescue plan" for NBC?) And, of course, lax-to-no regulation.
But last week I started getting emails with the same suspicious wording. The greatest financial catastrophe since 1929 was really brought on because "Bill Clinton and the Democrats" forced banks to lend to minorities with poor credit. This can be easily refuted. (In more depth, here). But the true believers can’t be reasoned with. Their "conservative" faith is a closed loop: everything bad is because of the "liberals." Everything! If "conservatism" fails, it’s because it wasn’t implemented with sufficient purity and zeal. This is exactly what the communists said back in Soviet days. What’s scary is how these memes might play with the duhs and ignos — "the low information voters." Or the undecided voters (how, in God’s name, could you be undecided after eight years of this disaster, McCain’s promise to continue the same policies, and his reckless picking of Sarah Palin as a running mate?).
They, too, are afraid for our country. But it’s the talk-radio, nuevo-McCarthyist paranoia that has been so politically useful to Republicans, the party that wrecked America. Vote for the Democrats and the U.S. will get hit again! Vote for a black man and your white, suburban, churchy teenage daughter will get pregnant at seventeen! (Whoops…) A mayor in suburban Charlotte is "curious" whether Obama is the Antichrist. They’re worried they can’t get enough gas to fill up the pickups to drive a hundred miles to their low-wage jobs with no benefits. And all our problems are government’s fault, liberals’ fault. Even though their "guys and gals," to use Gov. Palin’s locution, have held the White House or Congress for 26 of the past 28 years.
Talk about two Americas.
I recently had lunch with a friend — very bright guy, steeped in history, retired from a government position, the kind that makes one think: was he really a spook? (He denies it). He, too, voiced the intelligent worry I began this post with. But he wondered if a silent coup has already happened. Eisenhower’s worst fears had come true. That the moneyed interests that need the profits from perpetual war and its handmaiden, oil dependence, had already seized power. Sure, have your little elections. He also is concerned about the high numbers of evangelicals in the military and the active proselytizing that goes on in the ranks.
"I know it sounds crazy," my friend said. "The kind of thing I would have dismissed even a few years ago."
No, it’s not crazy. Now we also see this financial crisis, Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine brought home, where wealth is looted, further "free market" dogma implemented, and the plutocracy only consolidates its grip. I don’t think we’re quite lost yet. I do believe this election is our last chance to save constitutional government, to keep the Republic our Founders bequeathed to us. This is it.
For the first time in my life, I am afraid for our country.
I came back from a six-week tour of Europe on Saturday. The contrast was instructive. Their poverty, such as it is, pales by comparison to our own. Their infrastructure is first-rate. I didn’t see a single pothole in Germany. And their rail/mass transit makes car ownership not only unnecessary but superfluous for the average citizen. I saw few obviously rich people but I saw even fewer obviously poor people.
A four-hour layover on Saturday afforded me an opportunity to inspect downtown Philadelphia. It’s a vibrant and beautiful place. It’s also in trouble. The transit plaza underneath Market Street looks as if it belongs in a provincial Third-World city. A good number of local citizens appeared mired in the behavior of urban failure. Fortunately, the city functions because of its intrinsic value: universities, corporate headquarters, and stunning cultural and civic amenities from the glory years prior to World War II.
But it’s also a city hollowing out from within despite its urban creative class.
I keep hoping that we Americans will finally call a truce to the Second Civil War initiated by Richard Nixon in 1968. Yet, here we are again deciding the future of this country on the basis of issues like abortion and gay marriage. Our official kleptocracy has bankrupted us with their greed but they’re still skillfully yanking the chains of our inner Homer Simpsons.
John McCain’s breathtaking arrogance has finally gotten some media scrutiny so his election prospect appears increasingly remote. But imagine a President Obama trying to cope with the calamitous fallout from the decades of greed and fiscal mismanagement. The American right, toxic to it’s innermost core, will assign blame, ridicule and responsibility not where it belongs – their kleptocratic overlords – but to the man charged with cleaning up their mess. The corporate media will oblige them with endless hours of Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich denouncing Obama’s “liberalism”.
We’re a nation in decline. We’re silly, irresponsible, greedy and mean-spirited. We torture and self-congratulate at the same time. We make up stories about our “goodness” and then vote for cretins like George Bush. We do this because our suffering hasn’t – yet – created any fire that could illuminate our wayward path. We’re too proudly ignorant to even think their might be an alternative.
Obama is not the solution in himself. The solution will involve decades of time and unimaginable hard work. It’s a task Americans will not embrace. Bread and circuses were fun while they lasted. Now it’s time for the barbarian hordes.
This comment is, in part, a re-posting of a comment I made a few days ago that didn’t get past the spam filters.
I hope that we get it right this time, but I fear we won’t. If the financial crisis is bad enough and the media covers it properly, it may be enough. The America we remember with pride has never been good at acting in timely fashion. What we have done over and over again is to jump in at the last minute and heroically save the day. Then, we take credit for saving the world and rarely notice that it would have been easier and cheaper to take action sooner. We remember the Alamo, but not what caused the Depression.
If we don’t change anything in this election, it may be that things are just not bad enough, yet. Many still hold the illusion that USA is the ‘best’ in the world in every way. We clearly aren’t anymore. Anyone who actually looks outside the US media knows that we are not leading in any positive category except military strength.
If, as Jon’s friend suspects, a coup has already occured we may still hope to right the wrongs. The Americans have a history of taking drastic action when it is finally obvious that action is required. (I’m thinking of 1776)
I’m afraid that it is not quite bad enough yet. But it will be soon.
Mr. Talton wrote:
“But the true believers can’t be reasoned with. Their “conservative” faith is a closed loop: everything bad is because of the “liberals.” Everything! If “conservativism” fails, it’s because it wasn’t implemented with sufficient purity and zeal. This is exactly what the communists said back in Soviet days.”
In fact, many prominent builders of the neo-conservative movement were former Communists (e.g., David Horowitz, Irving Kristol, et al.). Once they decided to replace the quasi-religion of “Marxism-Leninism” with that of “free-market capitalism” or “market democracy” they brought the same kind of amoral zeal to the new politics.
Both systems share a view that, in the long term, they will bring the greatest happiness to the greatest number. Both systems admit that, in the meantime, lots of people will get hurt. Both systems regard that as a lamentable but unavoidable fact. Both systems, considering themselves to have the forces of history (not to mention science) on their side, eagerly subvert the truth for propaganda purposes, provided the result takes society further toward their ends, because they believe that, as the best possible system, the end justifies the means: allowing the system to be watered down with liberal reforms doesn’t, they claim, stop people getting hurt: it just postpones the glorious, ideal future; thereby, it is argued, this “false” compassion is actually cruelty. (If this seems like something from Orwell’s 1984, that’s because it is.)
Aside from the genuine idealists, who tend not to last very long, either philosophically or professionally, both systems are run by those who understand how things really work, and who have no objection to substituting, for an amoralism serving ideology, one serving them as individuals. Their ideology is thus a corrupt and cynical cloak for the consolidation of power and personal gain. Being disillusioned, they view the system as populated by two classes: suckers, and those who know how to take advantage of them. They prefer to be in the second category.
Those outside the political system — those who, by virtue of the influence of wealth on political realities (including campaign finance), RUN the political system — which is to say the super-rich — seldom suffer from ideological delusions.
They are unlikely to suffer much from all but revolutionary economic upheavals, because they know how to make money from others’ loss. They are in it for the long term, and they buy ownership interests in the things that people will always need in a civilized society: housing, energy, transportation, medical services, educational services, commercial property, factories to build products, fleets of trucks, trains, ships and planes to transport products, mines and other primary manufacturing inputs, land, and the companies that manage and operate all of these things, and more of the same.
Market crashes simply give them a chance to buy low, so that they can sell high later. Contrary to what some claim about the credit crunch, the problem is not a lack of liquidity: it’s a reluctance to commit that liquidity at a time when the market has not yet bottomed out. That’s why you sometimes read, in the business pages, about how there is plenty of capital chasing houses, yet housing sales are down: when property owners are not yet ready to offer their assets at fire-sale prices, those with the cash to purchase are not yet ready to buy. In the meantime, many of those who are buying homes are institutional (i.e., investors, not occupants).
At present, a few of the smaller sharks are getting swallowed by larger ones, but ownership is so interconnected at the top, that those “on the losing end” are also on the winning end, thus losing nothing in actuality. Most of their hatchet-men, the executive managers of these companies who are ultimately responsible for this mess, have already made out like bandits with executive compensation, having fled the sinking ships like rats months ago.
As a lover of history, but not being as educated as most who post here, I thought I was crazy to think that there are so many parallels between the neo-conservatives of today and the communist ideology / Chambers-Hiss case. So, when Nixon, then McCarthy were so headline greedy, did they solve anything or, did they just drive communism even more underground?
Joanna,
I’ll take a stab. Hiss was a Soviet agent and there were communists in the government in the ’30s and ’40s. But nowhere near as many as the right alleged.
McCarthy was a paranoid drunk who tarred everyone with the “communist” label — and the atmosphere, aided by the very real aggressiveness and secretiveness of the recently atomic-armed Soviet Union made people genuinely afraid. The right used this for political advantage. Sound familiar? In any event, there was no major domestic communist threat.
“Neo-con” is really a former liberal who became a conservative, especially in the ’70s and ’80s. It’s just part of the whole con, but its leading lights did push the Iraq war. Once conservatives prided themselves on their lack of dogmatism — they were realists, not idealists. I’ll leave it to readers to decide their sincerity. F.A. Hayek, the economist beloved of cons, said he was not a conservative; he wasn’t comfortable with their attraction to authoritarianism and the powerful. In any event, conservatives have become dogmatic and closed-minded.
Thanks for the info Jon. Re: “there were communists in the government in the ’30s and ’40s. But nowhere near as many as the right alleged.” Sam Tanenhaus’s “Whittaker Chambers, a biography” seems to suggest otherwise. Or, at least that’s my take on it.
Just remember, big government (oh heck, government in general) is a creation of the big, bad liberals. Therefore, if government screws up (as it is bound to do on occasion), just blame the liberals! It’s too easy.
Joanna,
(1) Regarding parallels between neo-conservatives and communists, Janet Silverstein published a book this year called “Conservative Communism: The Real History of the American Right from Marx to Neoconservatism”. I can’t vouch for the book, but the theme is certainly provocative, and here is a review:
https://stumpspeak.blogspot.com/2008/01/conservative-communism.html
Please note that I can’t vouch for the review either: this is just something I came across on the Internet. Caveat emptor. However, the marxist/Communist backgrounds of many of neo-conservatism’s founders and leading lights is well established, independent of this book and its interpretations.
(2) Mr. Talton is right about McCarthyite claims: they were vastly overstated, both with respect to sheer numbers and with respect to influence: and in many cases they were made cynically and for purposes of political manipulation. Books revisiting the era in light of subsequent knowledge (e.g., using Soviet archives) only make the case that, at the other end of the spectrum, the most naive elements among left-liberal groups understated the problem.
(2) Regarding the Communist underground: Lenin’s arguments (some of them quite cogent) on the need for a professional revolutionary vanguard presupposed some degree of secrecy from the beginning. The Palmer raids of 1919-21 first drove the CP USA underground in a wholesale fashion. The dissolution of the Comintern continued this. After WW II, the events of the early Cold War finally drove the Party more or less completely underground. By 1957 membership in CP USA had dwindled to less than 10,000 and some estimates claim that 1 in 3 were infiltrators working for the FBI. The question of at what point it became “better to travel” is somewhat subjective.
(3) Personally I think that Rosenberg et al. were right, but for the wrong reasons. The balance of nuclear power is undoubtedly why World War III never occurred. There was a narrow window when some on the right-wing in the United States wanted to use the bomb (which the USSR had yet to obtain) to “obliterate the Communists” in a “pre-emptive” nuclear strike.
Emil, many thanks. Alger Hiss has fascinated me for many years. It seems that I must have been meant to write about the Chambers-Hiss case. Even though a draft screenplay is 6-12 months out, I’m hoping some on this blog will grant me the favor of reading and critiquing the script.
The information you and Mr. Talton have so kindly given me adds even more to my excitement about the project.
In respect to numbers of communists, a screenwriter’s challenge is often striking a balance between the dramatic and factual. I’d really like to avoid the Oliver Stone effect.
Jon Talton writes:
“I don’t think we’re quite lost yet. I do believe this election is our last chance to save constitutional government, to keep the Republic our Founders bequeathed to us. This is it.”
I call it “Our Armageddon Election.” And yes this is it.
In so many ways and on so many levels:
For example, on the national level we actually have a party arguing in full sunlight that ignorance is a good thing. All questions directed at Palin are now being spun as gotchas. Think about that. Part of our culture is willfully and gleefully dumbing-down the brain power required for the second highest office in the land. There can be no recovery from such a hole. A country can not argue for stupidity today and achieve brilliance tomorrow. This isn’t one more coffin nail, it is a stake to the nation’s soul.
Another example on a personal level: I have no desire to participate in a country run by McCain. This is not to say I am “cutting and running” from America. We all know that such threats to pack up to Canada are mostly hollow. My plans are not like that. But I definitely have two totally different courses based on the outcomes of this election. Put succinctly, one course gives back to the culture as if the future matters. The other, extracts wealth from the system. Interesting enough, both plans get me to my chosen American State in the same time frame. I’m not at all sorry for having to parse my future this way. All who think Barack is a exponentially superior candidate are going to have to rationalize a McCain victory somehow. It won’t be easy. I suspect 1000s of similar butterfly effects as mine. These will reverberate throughout the system. The result will not be pretty. But then again, to use Krugman’s recent phrasing: How could a banana republic with nukes be a beautiful thing?
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/29/ok-we-are-a-banana-republic/
So here Mr. Talton gives us the current state of the nation and now we are debating how many Commies were in the government in times way past. ARGH! Neo-cons have a strategy to wreck this country and economy. Every war, tax cut, and every financial crisis is part and parcel of this plan. Paul Krugman of Princeton and the NYT had a great piece on this.
Basically, it is to increase the tax burdens on low- to middle-class income earners, cripple government with debt, and incarcerate as many of us as possible (this disenfranchises most felons from ever voting in this country). This is all sold to us under the guise of bad government, law & order, and the culture wars. I think Neo-cons are not particularly religious, but they do find it a useful tool to mobilize their base and cover their cynicism with righteousness.
This report of evangelists working within our military is most troubling. However, most servicemen quickly see thru the BS that the military, government, and church feed their young impressable minds, if they have anything on the ball. The last thing we need is the Christian Taliban patrolling our streets “for our protection”. I sometimes think this is the case after the last few unpleasant encounters I’ve had with the Phoenix PD – they are rude, aggressive, and arrogant, even during a traffic stop. No doubt carry over from Sheriff Joe’s bluster. And then they give me a ticket for something I see them do all the time (left turn at 12th and Indian School during rush hour – yes, its against the law – WTF?! – a $199.40 mugging).
electicdog, the discussion about communism continued offline and progressed to how many neo-communists, read neo-conservatives (new decade, new label, same ideology) there might be in government today. The possibility of this gave me a whole lot of pause for thought. Today’s woes didn’t just start in the last year or the last decade.
Having said that, I’M not going down without a fight! I won’t / can’t sit idly by. I’ve already talked to everyone that will listen (and some that probably would rather not) about the upcoming election, making sure they have enough information to make an informed choice of presidential candidates. When I’ve seen potential for vote fixing, I’ve done my best to make it public. I’ve given the Obama campaign some volunteer time. Now I’ll give them more. I don’t agree with everything Senator Obama says, but he’s the best hope we’ve got right now.
Joanna,
Yes, they are in the government by the boat-load. We elected them and they hired their buddies and put them on the Supreme Court. Don’t count on the Demos to fix this. They are part of the problem too.
Oh, and one more thing about “fear in the land.” Call it naive, but I do believe that fear can only control you if you let it. I’m temporarily working in Santa Fe, NM. Over the last several days, you can’t walk down a city street or visit a place of business without an Obama campaign worker asking if you’re registered to vote.
Re the Armageddon election: “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything”. Not said by a current member of Congress, but Joseph Stalin.
newspaperjunkie,
Re the vote counters: the reason the Obama campaign is strongly suggesting that voters use mail-in ballots so that there is a paper trail.
Regarding Mr. Talton’s dilemma (perhaps not the mot juste since he refers to reaching his chosen “American State” in either case) — whether to pursue progressive causes or personal wealth — I’d advise him to do both if possible.
Too often, progressives have a naive and impractical view of such matters. Man cannot live by bread alone, but without “bread” (and what it purchases) it’s difficult to “live” in this world.
If I were trying to fund a progressive political movement and media organ, for example, I wouldn’t shake my pale finger at the masses in stern rebuke and try to sell them tofu burgers: but if I had the capital, I might consider buying a McDonald’s franchise and, after deducting for my own needs, use the profits to support my progressive causes. I’d also keep the fundraising and political wings isolated, since nobody wants to be preached at while stuffing their face with junk food.
There is something inherently amusing about the idea of using capitalism to further progressive causes, anyway.
Good point, Joanna. Speaking of which, in Palm Beach County, Florida (home of the “butterfly ballot” in 2000), in August of this year, 3,478 optical scan votes disappeared between primary night and an official recount later, flipping the outcome of at least one race.
“Election officials say they can’t explain the discrepancy, though critics are concerned that this is a precursor to problems that could arise in the November presidential election.”
https://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/3400-ballots-mi.html
And…
“A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges.
“The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold.”
https://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/08/21/ohio_voting_machines_contained.html
QUOTE:
There’s plenty of blame to go around, but the big villains were the well-compensated top execs that took on so many risky loans; the chiselers on Wall Street that realized they could make money by bundling the mortgages into securities and selling them to clueless investors; the brainos who developed derivatives that even they didn’t understand (Warren Buffet: weapons of financial mass destruction), and Alan “pump up the housing bubble” Greenspan.
Ultimately, you can’t protect stupid people from their own stupidity. You can introduce regulation, create government departments, anything you like but the stupid people will always outsmart you by being even dumber than you could imagine. Quit now, before you start down this track.
It is illegal to dig a pit in the middle of the road, cover it over lightly and wait for someone to fall into it. The financial equivalent should also be illegal, in as much as regulation should enforce disclosure of known risks and the buyer of a bond should be crystal clear as to what exactly they are buying. However, if people want to buy up risky bonds, and they knew there were risks and they were greedy and thought that the big return potential was worthwhile — then that is their own lookout.
The nature of risk is that it is, well, risky. You know, dangerous. That’s it, deal with it.
Now, the whole idea of private debt versus government debt is that private debt belongs to someone, government debt belongs to everyone. If the government does something insanely risky (trying to invade Iraq to steal their oil for example) then everyone pays the price. If a private borrower does something stupid, then the debt chain unwinds and everyone reaches for their contracts and it stops somewhere. That’s what is so good about private debt — we can let it unwind. That’s exactly why government should stand back and let these things sort themselves out.
If the government wants to protect fragile (i.e. politically sensitive) mortgages then the best thing they can do is offer to selectively buy financial assets — in bankruptcy court. They will get the assets cheap because not many buyers will turn up.
The financial institution still goes belly up, the creditors get what they can and government buys up the assets that they consider too important to fall into the rough hands of the free market. See… we already have a system to cope with this “crisis”. People telling you how important the bailout really is, are those making a profit out of the current situation who don’t want to admit their mistakes.