As I contemplated the real possibility of an Obama victory and listened to right wing pundits revise history still unfolding, I thought of titles for this blog:
"Neocon Logic: This Statement is Untrue"
"The Modern Free Market System is False But a New Revelation Shall Come"
" They Would Feast on Themselves: All the Money's Gone, Nowhere to Go"
I decided on:
"No Currency Left to Buy the Big Lies"
In the pre-capitalist reality, James Madison said when he put power in the hands of the business elite, he would be entrusting "enlightened statesmen and benevolent philosophers who would devote themselves to the welfare of all."
Clearly, he believed this statement in the way I guess some modern Republicans do. The only problem was that he eventually realized this didn't work and in 1792, disillusioned and worried about the democratic experiment, condemned what he called "the daring depravity of the times." He went on to denounce the business elites who, given ultimate power, "become tools and tyrants of government...they overwhelm government with their powers and combinations and are bribed by its largesse." That's how he perceived the system he had helped design. In 2008, this is an apt description of the Republican relationship to government and power.
Finally, some blue light, tectonic plate shifts, a sea change, we hear... a wave of despair carrying us to a new place. The bastards are finally meeting their grisly ends and will be discarded and abandoned as men come to power who will actually try to govern. I know we're supposed to be civil but I'm not a real believer in this method when dealing with crimes.
What does the sea change mean? How can we help people understand what is happening and help them contextualize it?
First the past: Senator McCain, Governor Palin and assorted surrogates are delusional and breathtakingly corrupt. They disgrace themselves and their country as they lie, smear, slur and write it off as political manner.
Yet the creeping truth must frighten them late at night: there is no currency left to buy the big lies.
There is no more money left to loan or borrow the big lies or to sell them. No more money left to pay off the debt, the wreckage in the wake. The orgy of excess has drained every bottle, smashed the furniture and left the cupboards bare. All that's left is derivative debts -- bets between liars and lies. Trillions of dollars. Turned capitalism into a Ponzi scheme for trading worthless paper. No real value anywhere. No matter how much money Ben Bernanke prints.
We are asked to stand over the abyss and experience our own destruction as another political game show -- just another surreal horse race. We watch millionaires and paid Republican hacks appear on television yelling "Socialist!" at Obama as if the Bolsheviks are coming to rape our daughters. These are the same people who oversaw the greatest upward redistribution of wealth in the history of this country. The same people who, through general lawlessness and a privatization frenzy, succeeded in shredding the Constitution, turning war, illegal domestic spying, security, border patrol, interrogation, and even torture into profitable industries gorging on the state.
So define the big lie: free marketers want free markets. Not so, the facts say. They are the biggest welfare freaks on the planet.
These men and keepers of the faith would lecture us with a straight face on the evil socialists/ communists/terrorists /vampires/space aliens who would dare "redistribute wealth" by amending the tax code. Two wars and the only shared sacrifice they want is more tax cuts for the rich and for the U.S. citizenry to continue shopping. As Sidney Falco said, you gotta give it to them, their gall is gorgeous.
If we stay the course, we are told, we will finally, one day, reach that shining city on a hill, the free market-based fundamentalist utopia. Even though all evidence points the other way, we should listen, reason, step back and watch them as they devour what's left of the government. They will feast on themselves -- the feast of carrion the Book of Revelation tells us -- but I digress, sort of. It's over. This would be a great system if there were no human beings.
Mathematical realism. Eat what you kill. The bottom line. Greed is good. Graphs and flow charts and metrics for success. All social organization is based on profit as the unifying force and engine of the common good and even social justice; worship the market, even as you corrupt it.
Our perfect system will provide for all.
And yet Wall Street cripples America and the world because it won't adhere to the same rules it says we must obey for the good of freedom. Because reality won't be a slave to their machine.
And so this is how we can rationalize privatizing war. At last look, with 630 corporations like Blackwater and Halliburton getting 40% of the $2 billion spent each week in Iraq, no one can doubt the corporatist dominance of the war machine.
Mathematically, the market crash shouldn't have happened according to their system, but human feelings make panic and panic cannot be calculated. I would bet that someday someone will discover that math adheres to a quantum reality: the participants and the observers affect the outcome. I digress again. But not really.
Instead of an international consensus based on trust and global community, the Neocons say trust no one, need no one, ask no one. Rigged, "open" markets are created at the barrel of a gun after bombing a country. We must all bow to the market.
Collapse, chaos, lawlessness. And even the market voted with its feet.
The era of market idolatry is over.
This is the end of Milton Friedman, Reaganomics and supply-side theory. This ideology has never been about free markets but a fundamentalist vision that is a cover for naked aggression and a social contract based on fear and greed. The government's job is to create optimal conditions for corporate profit, to privatize everything in sight and to sell off its own body parts. To literally devour itself.
So we have laws that allow borrowing money against derivatives -- basically a bet between two people who create nothing without collateral. They leveraged the public financial health on something you wouldn't be allowed to do in Vegas. It illustrates the corruption that has become institutionalized through deregulation and a culture of predatory greed. Alan Greenspan testified that he was shocked: business didn't regulate itself. The common good was not achieved by greed. Naomi Klein read him the definition of crony capitalism and asked if it fit the description of the Bush administration's relationship to its favorite corporations.
I suppose he was shocked about that too. His testimony was incredible and felt like it was coated in lies or at least standing deeply in their shadows. But one doesn't doubt him as a true believer, absolved of messy feelings of collective responsibility. We made him a high priest even though we saw the suffering and the cruelty of the system.
The final irony of the free-market Darwinist model is instead of the strongest and best surviving, it's really the weakest and the worst. From a moral and spiritual point of view this is hardly in doubt. See George Bush. The gospel he purports to serve tells us this but perhaps he saw Christ as a conqueror. I've always doubted men who call themselves Christians who live by the law of the jungle. The gospels, the Koran and the Torah make no bones about it: wealth is not strength; power often represents not the brightest and the best but the weakest and worst. The beast in the Book of Revelation is not a horn-rimmed devil but Rome. Empire. Any empire. Every empire.
As Bush leaves office, the real truth is this: the new economies of the world disprove everything he ever said. Apparently that doesn't matter.
Neoconservatives will lie in the weeds and gather forces, the same players in a revolving door. They want back in and if history has proved anything, worshiping the markets is not enough. We must actually kill to feed them. A horrible cross-pollination of fundamentalism, dementia and market fever has turned America into a willing enabler of corporate cannibalism. Nothing else to call it when murder is seen as a legitimate extension of economic policy. Preemptive war is not only justified but openly referred to as a market opportunity. The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. As we look out at the wreckage -- world economies collapsing, nationalized banks and a complete loss of trust -- we can see the hypocrisy as all are revealed as true socialists on the way down, crying in their scotch and Ambien as they run to the state for cover.
Many, like the Financial Times, endorse Obama. But let's remember when the F.T. and the Wall Street Journal talked glowingly and starry-eyed about the "Baghdad Boom" -- as horrifying a moniker as Shock and Awe. It was not the site of a gold rush, it was the sight of massacre and armed robbery. Now these men jump like rats off a death ship but don't be fooled. Francis Fukuyama and company will just lay low, regroup and rebrand. They speak openly about such things, beaten but unbowed, with no moral connection to the fiasco they have fostered. They speak as passing spectators watching the Weather Channel, (see Frum, Kristol, Brooks and all the rest), rather than intellectual architects, defenders, and foot soldiers in an illegal war and the thirty-five year assault on the New Deal.
As we help Obama try to implement another New Deal, I asked Naomi Klein about the parallels to The Shock Doctrine as it's polar opposite. She told me:
"I have been talking about the need for a progressive shock doctrine in speeches a lot. I call it disaster populism and the key difference is democracy. The right has been using shocks to suspend and sidestep democracy, declaring states of emergency and the progressive use of shock to enlarge and deepen the democratic space to bring more people into the political process. This is why it is important to remember that the New Deal did not come only from kindly elites handing it down from on high, but also because those elites were under massive popular pressure from below. We can all use shock and crisis to move the political direction of the country, but the progressive route is a democratic one, the right is an authoritarian one, even if it takes place within an electoral democracy."
The real challenge is to erase the delusion that greed equals freedom and prosperity, let alone the hideous lie that it somehow spreads justice. Amazingly, we are asked to listen to this gibberish in political life no matter how high the bile rises.
Many believe economies must serve humanity and not the other way around. Economies must make a moral connection to the republic. Brace yourselves free marketers: the quality of economic and human transactions will have to take priority over money. Faith and hope have to manifest in the social transactions we make.
A new social contract could be coming based on a real currency my friend Kevin McCabe calls the currency of grace. It is a currency of economic fairness and institutionalizing concepts of shared responsibility; a currency based on the gold standard that every human has value and should be awarded respect and opportunity, the dignity that comes from human beings protecting each other from the values and ideals of a Darwinist world. Its spirit is in Keynesian economics, a mixed economy with regulated markets and social spending. In the new era, we must remove fundamentalist right wing economists as the high priests and kings. Their ideology will stay dead only if we remain vigilant and call things what they are. It's a battle for the idea of America and it's just beginning if Senator Obama becomes president.
We should worship God if we want to, not the markets.
R.I.P Studs Terkel.
For more on War, Inc. go to my MySpace Page, or Amazon.com.
IT'S THE CONSUMER STUPID we need real money in our wallets not B.S loans or B.S credit cards
$5,000 per year for all taxpayers and legal social security card holder for the next 4 years would be a good start.
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We are asked to stand over the abyss and experience our own destruction as another political game show -- just another surreal horse race.
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That is exactly what I feel every time I am told, by some self-described "free-market guy" that "assets" who nobody is willing to purchase at their current asking price, and perhaps not at any price, are "undervalued." Gramm-Leach-Biley unregulated mortgage-backed securities on a twisted free-market argument that freedom is anarchy. We let him get away with it, the affected markets inflated beyond prices real people could pay, then beyond their ability to willfully suspend their disbelief in the potential of real estate prices to skyrocket without limit, and now we are confronted by the inevitable result, the tyranny of the financially powerful.
You see, this is the problem I have with your point of view. You present a clear, well thought out case against the Republicans, but you aren't even handed in your criticism of our government. You let the Democrats slide. You Spell out the evils of Empire, yet ignore the biggest American Political Empire; The Kennedy Empire. This is where you and the likes of Michael Moore, and Keith Oberman lose me. Although yours is a much more intelligible argument then those presented by those two.
Let me see you put this much though and energy into what is wrong with the Democrat Party and I may once again lend an ear to your ideas.
$2 billion a week in Iraq and there are American citizens sleeping on the street, hungry?? $2 billion a week yet we still haven't found a cure for cancer?? $2 billion a week yet there are people still suffering from the mess of Katrina? $2 billion????!! I cannot even comprehend that much money!!!
I spoke to an english man who served in Iraq. His housing quarters were simple tents. One day he visited the US Section. Air conditioning, McDonalds, KFC. What the hell??? US built a McDonalds in Iraq specifically for the troops? Is this true or something this guy dreamt up? $2 billion dollars????
My tiny brain cannot comprehend.
neocon, new deal, shock doctrines, progressive or not are all still under the keynesian theory of free market economy. looking back, free competition only lasted a decade before being murdered by monopoly capitalism, dancing to the macabre tune of chronic crisis of overproduction.
When the bail out includes bonuses for Wall Steeet criminals but no funds to save lost foreclosed homes, a stimulous package or middle class tax break is a band aid for John Q. Public. As it stands, right wing lie machine pundits persist in condemning financing for the public good as welfare or sharing the wealth while their crooked Wall Street buddies get away with billions of free funny money.
B.O. is the US's first Black President. But he is only a human being. To do the right thing by We The People, a moral leader would have to live in a pope mobile bubble and have a citizen's army behind him. For vultures of corruption will come to roost for the top 1% to stymie any populist administration.
If Obama fails it will be because the United States moneymen of America only protect and serve their own. But if Obama is a Frank Capra mensch out to fix a country run by Scrooges behind the scenes, real change will come. In these the worst of times, we can only hope for the best that Obama will speak for all of us and not just bottom liners who only represent money and are enemies of humanity.
Inspired by the potential of a welcome and hopeful transition of power, I applaud Obama and his compassionate quest to restore the public trust to We The People after two terms of chicken hawk oil war and corporate thug thievery. But his staff is already starting to seek advice and council of some of the same hen house wolf moneychangers who helped cause the economic crisis in the first place.
In fact, the first words out of his mouth in an interview betrayed the nerves and trepidation of a man who may have suddenly realized that he is burdened by a nation still owned by money power players who play private monopoly with the public trust. Thus the money printed to save US has no real value or consequence because main street has already been outsourced to foreign cheap labor. This is why we make nothing in America anymore and our main export has been NeoCon man imperialism.
If the beloved Kennedys were given a second chance at life, they would have no doubt fired or ignored anyone who was part of the chaos of the last 8 years, picked patriotic politicos and started from scratch to rebuild what this nation once stood for when we used to impeach our Thief Execs.
Thanks for all your words, works and support
through this election, you've helped a great deal.
2008 will be remembered as the year American's woke up and realized their government has become just as corrupt as those in 'third world' countries that we read about and shake our heads at. We always lived in that comfort that our nation was so civilized, such a leader among the world, and after the fall of the former Soviet Union, we dared to feel secure that we were sitting as the only Super power left in the world. We now see how the 'mighty' can fall,and are left with a broken government, broken financial structure, and leaders who don't know how to fix it.
The great hope is that President-elect Obama has the strength to make the serious changes that need to be made to the very foundations of how this country has been running - fueled by greed and lies. The good news is that it now seems a nation of both republicans and democrats actually have a glimmer of hope and are looking for a new direction. We can all work together to make the change that is needed. But we need to listen, leave behind the negative, and move forward toward a more civilzed and honest future.
I find it strange how some posters here belittle this one as the author is an actor. You have incredibly many clichees and boxes to fill with prejudice simply because of one's profession. We honor in Europe articulate, well written rational thought no matter who delivers it. In the past 2 years since I read Huffpo, whenever something has to do with Hollywood, there are the same old accusations: commie, leftist, liberal, socialist, as if intelligence was found only on that side of your country. Personally I think John Cusack is a good actor, but this has nothing to do with this fine piece he has written here.
Even for the most neo conservative and elitist posture, it's a simple matter of fact that any fortune can get secure if not by collective prosperity.
Pauperism can't stand aside the most efficient liberal market system and economy.
Thoughts and comments like this one just reveal how fearful it's autor is and egotism too has to acknowledge that there is also no currency left to buy those fallacies.
So, move on if you're to get reward of achieving for yourself and those you care for.
There may be additional value in the Obama win for a period of time.
Goodwill may mean a deeper well to borrow from to fix the economy.
http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/11/americas-obama-capital.html
Are you one of those who can deny any single fact Cusack pointed out (with his conviction may be, but damn true) and demonstrate that the system is just efficient with things falling apart?
Who is ironical in that way? Voting with a tax bill :-)? Not proud of what america's vote has signified to the whole world in such tough time? Do not like Obama? No problem, he (and many) doesn't care.
Go take part of the change now.