A big reason that the Iraq war never ignited nationwide outrage on the scale of Vietnam protests was the absence of conscription. As long as the volunteer army confined the consequences of George W. Bush's Oedipal acting-out to one slice of America, taking it to the streets was just not how the country channeled its anger; telling it to the pollster was more like it.
But watching today's economic crisis touch people in every corner of the country, I wonder whether this democratization of catastrophe will turn out to be the match that finally lights the fire of reform.
Everyone is being hurt by this meltdown. People-like-us, not just people-like-them, are losing their jobs, homes, savings, dignity and dreams. If this were a natural disaster - a pandemic, say, or an earthquake - there would be mourning. But this calamity has human causes; there are villains' fingerprints all over it. So along with grief comes outrage, and along with outrage comes the potential for widespread protests, and along with widespread protests comes the scary side of organized anger: demagoguery, scapegoating, threats, violence, mobs.
Don't get me wrong. I find few sights as sweet as the groveling that corporate titans are now being forced to do.
Their years of reaping short-term profits instead of investing in long-term growth destroyed our economic competitiveness. Their legal bribery of politicians created a cult of deregulation and "supply side" tax cuts that caused a massive transfer of wealth to the rich from the rest, resulting in unprecedented inequities and disparities. The casino they built out of collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps differed from Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme in size, but not in kind. Their obscene compensation - hundreds of times the earnings of average workers, a ratio that ballooned a thousand percent over the past two generations - drew those generations to Wall Street, where they bent their talent to making money instead of goods. Their conspicuous consumption was glamorized by a media that coined fawning new terms to describe them, like "masters of the universe," but forgot relevant old terms, like "robber baron" and "vulgarian."
They deserve all the humiliation they're reaping from their raping. But the populism uncorked by their bad behavior is as risky as it is refreshing.
If it was frightening to watch crowds at rallies for John McCain and Sarah Palin be whipped into ugly anger, it should also be troubling to hear talk radio talk and cable news noise about torchlight, pitchforks and garrottes. If Senator Joseph McCarthy's bullying of witnesses for names of alleged communists was alarming in the 20th century, it should be disturbing in the 21st to watch congressmen demand the names of the recipients of AIG bonuses. If racism, anti-semitism, homophobia and xenophobia were inflamed by Weimar Germany's financial collapse, why should today's global cataclysm be immune from analogous hate?
Last week The Los Angeles Times ran a large color photo with this caption: "HELPING HIMSELF: An Israeli takes items from the shelves of a supermarket in Hatzor Haglitit. As word spread that unhappy employees were looting, townsfolk joined in." In the picture, a clean-shaven guy in his thirties - polo shirt, sweater, jeans - is filling a yellow plastic grocery bag with packaged food. The floor of the supermarket aisle behind him is strewn with boxes and cans; the shelves have been ransacked. On his head, the man wears a yarmulke.
Unaccountably, the contrast between the meaning of that skullcap - here is a God-fearing man - and the meaning of his action - here is lawlessness - disturbed me as much as photos of devastation in Gaza, or of carnage wrought by suicide bombers in Tel Aviv. "In Israel, economic woes lead to looting" was the headline of the story. Is the veneer of civil society so thin, in Israel or America or anywhere else, that unemployment is an easy excuse for anarchy? We have all been chilled by images of looting in the wake of floods and riots. Will the Great Recession we have fallen into reveal that our culture, our values, our religion and our laws turn out to be pathetically flimsy barriers between the better angels of our nature and the volcanic rage these times are unleashing?
Sure, it's possible that our rising anger is little more than what Walter Shapiro in The New Republic calls "apolitical populism - a spasmodic outpouring of ideologically incoherent rage." In this reading, though popular outrage may cause Obama even more trouble than Republican obstructionism, it is unlikely to coalesce around a policy agenda, unlikely to kindle a movement the way the draft did.
But there's another possibility. Yes, our apoplexy poses terrible risks. But the opening for real reform that also accompanies it - an opportunity for justice, accountability, solving intractable problems, making essential investments - could turn out to be as game-changing for this era as Vietnam was to another. Obama didn't want, predict or deserve this disaster. But out of it may yet come a bigger opening for bigger change than anyone might have hoped to believe in.
This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.
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There are so many indictments and root causes in that statement it is breathtaking. I know how you meant it Mr. Kaplan, but if a problem is to be solved versus kicked down the road might we not look at driving force which in many cases is attitude. There is a real mentality out here in this world that sees your sentence as an alarm only now. That is the real story to me. Only when it affects me will I see. If it is ok on my home front all is ok. But doesn’t disease spread like a creeping hand whose fingers close around the jugular of a nation over time? Isn’t a bad foundation a potential for collapse later. Are fundamental flaws the root cause...flaws in the sense of morality, flaws in the sense of feeling toward neighbor and countrymen. Our founding flaws of exclusionary thinking and privileged, nose in the air approaches to humanity may be functioning as a boomerang. I say may be. I am no soothsayer, I know not what the future holds. Nor do I mean to harp on the past. Something is happening in our world and the stock market and the job market are but two indicators. Its a real iffy proposition concerning the future and that has gotten the attention of the masses of people -- the world over.
Give the people credit.
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The Obama plan seems to be to reset the chessboard with all the same pieces in place as before. Basically rewinding the economic video-tape back to before we went off the cliff, just so we can replay it and go off the cliff again.
All this spending would be worth it if we were to have a paradigm shift in how our economy works and who it rewards; but the same people who have siphoned, raided, and pillaged our national wealth will be the recipients of any success of the Obama plan. And they will not be sharing it around any better than they did the first time.
NANNY STATE FOR THE RICH and CEO welfare queens since before their fake cowboy prez Reagan
in 1980.
The Republican-MADE MESS America has now was sown by THEM decades ago.
The serious message that you are presenting here is, of course, exactly correct. Mr. Obama's election on a promise of "change" raised the bar very highly for expectations that this "change" would in fact come about ... and promptly so. Any hint that change is not forthcoming could become disillusionment, and disillusionment on a national scale can turn very ugly, very fast.
But this anger is a potent force, and "potency" is not something that we have seen in this country for a very long time. The changes that must be made here are fundamental ones, of the type that can only be accomplished by legislation -- hence, by the Congress not the President. Yet, the President is always the chief-executive, therefore always the focal point, always the voice of both the problem and the solution.
We have already heard other voices: Russian voices, and now Chinese voices. The damage that has been willfully done within this country extends not only to all of America's citizens but to the world population. Apology is not enough. Diplomacy is not enough. Systemic changes are required, and plenty of citizens in this highly-interconnected world of ours are thinking(!) about them. And talking.
We must channel this outrage into thought, and this thought into effective action. Both nationally and internationally, for we ALL are stakeholders. And, right now, we are all also PLAINTIFFS.
1:07pm
Indianapolis Central Library
Hi Marty,
RE: "Is the veneer of civil society so thin, in Israel or America or anywhere else, that unemployment is an easy excuse for anarchy?"
Had you been paying attention to me at all you would know that no excuse is needed. Unless jealousy and greed are excuses.
The racism stirred at McCain / Palin rallies, the reactionary evil spouted by Sen. McCarty and his henchmen, and the racism, anti-semitism, homophobia and xenophobia of prewar Germany, somehow equated to the factually based anger almost all of us feel toward the greedy masters of the financial universe who have manipulated the system for their own benefit, at the cost of the future of our children.
Where is your sense of proportionality?
We have every right to know the names and see the faces of everyone of these people. We must demand access to this information.
Bad actors shamed into acting more reasonably.
One can only hope this is the beginning of the end of the elitist entitlement society that does so much damage to our country.
What Obama needs to do is get hands-on with the bailout money and make sure it is used only for the purposes for which it is given. If I take out a loan to buy a car, I can't just use that money for a plasma TV instead; why should AIG be held to a lower standard? Until the government steps up and makes "taking responsibility" mean more than an empty campaign promise, the outrage will grow. And it will be justified.
I don't know where you got the idea that people want health care reform because they're whiny and spoiled. They want it because they're sick of paying through the nose for medical insurance that purposely keeps costs high and denies claims.