Politics: National

Well, that was over fast. The real or supposed national outrage in America over the airport body scanners was supposed to create a backlash, culminating in a "national opt-out day." Travelers would refuse to go through the new scanners, creating huge lines at airports and…what was supposed to happen from there, I'm not sure. David Carr of the New York Times argues it was a creature of media hype, but he's the media columnist (and, god knows, he wouldn't be the first such scribe desperate for a column idea). I never thought this opt-out would happen, and not because Americans had the wisdom to set aside media-wrought hysteria.

For one thing, we don't have many travel options. It's pretty much fly or drive. Six decades ago, we had the finest passenger train system in the world as well as the best airline service. We had far more intercity trains going to more destinations on the eve of Amtrak in 1970 than we have today. And this is just conventional rail, not the high-speed lines in operation and being expanded all over the world — and competing very well against airlines on many city-pairings. We opted out. Now, not only are we left with far fewer travel options, but we are an increasingly backward nation in transportation.

If one were observing an ignorant and self-indulgent "consumer" America in the abstract, it would be fun to say, "Go right ahead, enact the deficit reductions recommended by the old right-wing coot Alan Simpson & Co. See how that works out for you." The anti-middle-class, anti-investment-in-the-future tenor of the report is perfectly in keeping with the Tea Party, and apparently the white, suburban vote that the Democrats have lost. And this is a commission appointed by Barack Obama. I'd feel this way if I wanted my country to hurt and fail. But I don't.

"Austerity" is just a con to further enrich the nationless capital markets and the super-rich. Nothing more. The very rich have no interest in the history of America from the 1940s through the 1970s, when a rising and secure middle class, and 90-percent tax rates on top earners, still supported fine lifestyles for the wealthy as well as the world's greatest economy and society. Now we have to lose so they can win yet more. But austerity and tax cuts are the watchword, the intellectual fraud that has taken the day. Somehow the boobs indoctrinated by Fox "News" and rightwing talk radio never think it applies to them. To their 4,000-square-foot exurban houses for a family of four, multiple gas guzzlers and "consuming" from the mall and Wal-Mart — all on credit. Why, that's the American dream. Talk about an unsustainable entitlement program.

So the "conservatives" on Wall Street and in parts of corporate America seem on their way to buying an election. This is not foreordained: Voters could come to their senses and not return to power the very party whose policies and ideology most caused our mess. Democrats might come out fighting as Democrats, not Republican-lite — although that window is closing thanks to the odious and dangerous vote-by-mail trend. But it looks as if this is the world we'll live in. And we'll look back fondly on the hapless Harry Reid and the rictus smile of Nancy Pelosi.

The ideal world of the Republican plutocracy and their Tea Party stooges is the 1920s, if not the Gilded Age. No New Deal. No Social Security or Medicare. No worker protections purchased with union blood. It's a far cry from the "right to rise" for everyone and heavy emphasis on government infrastructure that characterized the early GOP, from Abraham Lincoln's pronouncement: "Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration." It is far from Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford or even Ronald Reagan." They want government to enhance the fortunes of the rich, the big corporations, a huge defense establishment and devil take the hindmost — for the middle class, it will be the law of the jungle. At least the years of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover didn't include theocracy, the sidelining of science and endless wars.

Whether they get it will be another matter. But if the election turns out as it appears, I wonder whether the Democratic Party has much future, whether it will become the Whigs of the 21st century, or the equivalent of Britain's Liberal Party. And, forgive me,  I wonder, in the wake of the Citizens United decision by the permanently "conservative" Supreme Court combined with an ignorant citizenry and the bungling of the Obama administration, whether progressivism can ever make a comeback in America. Karl Rove and the old white people win, after all. And who knows if the coming racially diverse and smart young America promised by Mr. Obama's election will ever materialize as a positive electoral force in the face of so much corporate and plutocratic power?

Even though President Obama can still give a good speech, it's not too early to assess the latest failed American presidency.

Making advanced investments to create jobs and industries, as well as making America more competitive? No, he can't. Closing Guantanamo? No, he can't. Preparing America for a future of high energy costs and resource competition? No, he can't. Ending our ill-considered imperial adventures in the Muslim world? No, he can't. Addressing climate change? Reforming the dangerous Wall Street casino? Correcting bad trade deals that have cost millions of American jobs and closed thousands of American manufacturers? The employee free-choice act? Overcoming special interests. No. No. No. Hell, no.

Barack Obama is one of the most gifted politicians in my lifetime. When he was elected, the comparisons were abundant: The second coming of Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, FDR. None of that turned out to be real. Instead, the comparisons now trend to Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter. If the Republicans were not so crazy, Mr. Obama would be a one-term president. With Mitt Romney lurking in the wings, he may yet be.

It's been a blessedly cool summer in Seattle. Only a couple of brief warm spells and plenty of days with morning clouds. The rest of the nation has suffered through the hottest summer on record and still we will do nothing to address climate change. The big polluters and fossil-fuel giants are pushing an initiative in California to roll back that state's "Global Warming Solutions Act." The Great Recession drags on and things may get worse, much worse. The commentariat and leading economists refuse to see how much we have changed as an economy, as a country. The changes have accumulated, not least being the shattered social compact, and now we are trapped as surely as the Chilean miners, except no one is digging us out.

I'll be headed back to Phoenix for awhile. The civilization that thrives in Seattle lets me forget what it must be like to live every day amid the madness that has overtaken my home state. That wealthy Republican John Sidney McCain III won his primary against the hapless J.D. Hayworth should surprise no one. McCain has the backing of local and national elites. The media love fest with Maverick will resume. Few will ask: Four terms of McCain and what does Arizona have to show for it? It's not just what he didn't do, but what he did to actively hurt and hold back a state that wouldn't even exist without large amounts of federal investment.

The Kookocracy increases its hold. I had hoped that enough Arizonans would be horrified by this bunch, would actually notice that their policies, carried out for years, had failed miserably. It was not to be. Now the proto-fascism of the Arizona white-right is a national tide. As someone who was raised as a Theodore Roosevelt Republican, it amazes me that today's GOP is down to two ideas: Tax cuts for the rich and hate. They hate browns and blacks. They hate immigrants and Muslims. They hate gays. They hate the president, science, Social Security and women who want the government out of their reproductive decisions. They hate the First Amendment (but not the Second). They hate the poor, "liberals" and, of course, old Republicans, who are RINOs to be exterminated.

As others have noted, the 'ground zero mosque' hysteria, whipped up by the white-right and the corporate media, is this year's version of 'death panels' and other nonsense that sandbagged Democrats last August. What's remarkable is that the party keeps falling for it. A party so cowardly doesn't deserve to remain in "power," if you can call their recent run being in power — a minority of lockstep Republicans have managed to block most meaningful legislation. A party so stupid doesn't deserve to survive, when it could run on the rhetoric of Harry Truman or FDR or its few contemporary real Democrats (Rep. Alan Grayson, Sen. Bernie Sanders et al). But it won't. That it could fall for the same play over and over, again and again. The president has given a few good speeches, including this one in Seattle earlier this week. Unfortunately, the Obama magic has fallen into a credibility gap with an administration run by Wall Street and Clintonites.

I know all this is true. I just hate to consign our nation to more of the same right-wing governance. On and on until…what? Perhaps the Democrats must go the way of the Whigs. Yet an America that has lost its lead in college degrees — lost the ability to value education and thinking in the age of Sarah Palin and suburban arrogant-ignorance — won't embrace a progressive agenda. Will it? We may never know because the major media outlets are themselves either compromised or terrified. Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox "News" and the Wall Street Journal, is openly giving money to the Republicans as well as tilting coverage. This is just the opening salvo in corporate money that will gain even more control over our government thanks to the "conservative" Supreme Court. (Do the Democrats think it was wise, say, to have two presidential nominees in 16 years from Massachusetts?)

Yet this is neither 1994 nor even 1988, when Michael Dukakis was punked by the late Lee Atwater, the political daddy of Karl Rove. The list of differences would be long and almost all are alarming and risky. The most immediate and volatile is unemployment. America has never seen a jobs crisis like this since the Great Depression — and then we were still the world's largest creditor nation and enjoyed the most powerful industrial base. Now we have at least 16 percent real unemployment and no prospect of recouping those lost jobs. Indeed, highly profitable companies are cutting jobs, freezing wages and, in one high-profile case, demanding pay cuts. In any other time, this would be the making of social and political strife. Don't assume that flat-screen TVs and Wal-Marts will keep the peace forever.

So how will it go down, this mess we're in? Dysfunctional empires can last a long time (Byzantium) or not (the Soviet Union). We've been more violently divided, in 1861, and yet the nation survived, albeit with more than 600,000 killed. America suffered worse governance and severe big-business malfeasance in the decades after the Civil War, but the damage was limited by the decentralization of cohesive small towns, farms and close families, the opportunity of the frontier, rising living standards and finally was reversed by the rise of the Progressive movement. The nation saw worse unemployment and economic collapse once before in modern times, but finally the federal government led by Franklin Roosevelt responded with vigor and effectiveness. And yes, a big war helped. We were mired in Vietnam and finally gave up and still America sailed on, passing two centuries.

Times now are tough and alarmist sentiments are easy. We can always muddle through, can't we? One observer has written glibly about how we'll add another 100 million people in suburban bliss. Most Americans can't imagine a future that's not pretty much like the recent past, maybe with a few wind turbines and solar panels added. Still, I can't think of a moment in history quite like what we now face.

The stock market is swooning again. One reason is sobering enough: Fear of slower growth in China, which has taken the spot held by America for a century, as the nation expected to lead the world out of recession. But the market has been in a secular bear for a decade. The real American economy is a wreck in its fundamentals — something very different from the crises listed above. Before, we were always an economic powerhouse, a petro superpower, and each generation was guaranteed a better standard of living than its parents. No more. Another banking crisis is very possible, as is a new bubble in Treasury bonds. We make so little here now that we can't undo the huge imbalances of debt. The Ponzi scheme has collapsed. Long-term unemployment is a human tragedy and political nitroglycerin. What of the commons has survived the Reagan Revolution is now falling apart. We're mired in two wars that are only the most obvious pieces of untenable military overstretch.

And we know some things. We know the Democrats are unwilling to put together an effective progressive agenda and sell it to America. How could they when so much of the government is now controlled by corporate interests? We know Wall Street and the big banks have gotten away with it, and they will be cooking up new trouble for the economy and expecting the taxpayers to once again pay for their swindles gone wrong. Addressing climate change, building 21st century transit and rail systems, retrofitting suburbia for a peak-oil future, rebuilding our educational, research and manufacturing dominance — nope. Confronted with historic discontinuity and unsustainablity, our course will remain unchanged. The solutions are there — we refuse to undertake them. The confluence of business, political and even cultural interests and forces will make it so. The elites, even in the media, are well paid, live in fine cities and are educated in the conventional wisdom. They are paid to not get it. We know all this.

So, how's it going to go down?

In the fever swamps of the white-right, the conversation is about whether President Obama is a socialist, a fascist or a communist — as if they even knew what these critters are. The more on-point provocative question is whether the rich hate the American middle class and have declared war on it.

I know, I know: This is going way over the top, Talton. The crisis enveloping average Americans has been building for decades and comes from complex sources, not a conspiracy, for goodness sake. The capital markets may produce some destructive results, but it's not part of a master plan devised over cigars and cognac in the VIP suite at the Oval Room. True enough. And there are some inspiring examples of some wealthy people giving to worthy causes. This is a complex issue, which makes it beyond the talk radio- and television-addled masses. Still, it must be addressed. It doesn't take a conspiracy to create a community of interests that produces a similar result. Phoenix and Arizona are a textbook example with the Real Estate Industrial Complex.

Somebody pushed for questionable trade agreements, job offshoring, union busting, monopolistic industrial concentration, the shredding of pensions and benefits, a financialized economy, deregulation, big government welfare for corporations and the lowest taxes on the rich in generations. Somebody continued to expand these policies even after their destructiveness was well known. Somebody profited hugely. Now, with the Great Recession, the long and growing estrangement between the elites and the rest of us has snapped. Corporate America sits on $1.8 trillion cash while millions face years of unemployment and most see years of wage stagnation. Two Americas, indeed.

Zonie readers will have to forgive me. I've reached a point where Arizona's cruelty, narrow-mindedness, magical thinking and self-destructive policies are … boring. I promise to snap out of this fugue state next week.

John Boehner already is measuring new draperies for the speaker's office and Republicans seem confident of at least retaking the House, if not the whole enchilada in 2010 and then 2012. Their policy prescriptions haven't changed: military adventurism, deregulation, slashing and blocking important domestic investments — now justified by the deficit they ran up — and, especially, tax cuts. Nothing is more Reaganesque than cutting taxes.

According to Republicans, this accomplishes two goods: It raises more tax revenue for the government because it lures capital from shelters into productive uses, and, it encourages more capital formation that creates jobs. Everybody wins. George H.W. Bush derided the first part as "voodoo economics" and Paul Krugman wrote a most convincing takedown in 2003. Even so, tax cutting has been American governing orthodoxy for 30 years. Just the possibility of letting the George W. Bush tax cuts expire or returning to the estate tax that has been in place for nearly a century provokes apoplexy.

The second part of the tax-cut argument had more resonance. Even I once believed that if you really wanted to stick it to the rich, reduce their rates enough to make it impossible for them not to want to invest. Some of that is bad history, of course. The American economy did very well with Eisenhower's 90-percent range top bracket for the wealthiest, and the greatest boom of the 20th century and first surpluses in decades came after Bill Clinton slightly raised taxes. But the final blow to the tax-cut argument came under George W. Bush, as taxes were slashed on the rich, major corporations got away with paying no taxes and the estate tax was whittled to nothing. Yet the Bush years saw a net gain of a mere 1 million jobs, wages stagnated and income inequality hit levels not seen since at least the 1920s. What went wrong?