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The World We Really Live InOctober 03, 2008 I am sorry sorry sorry that the U.S. House passed the slightly sweetened bailout package, but am I surprised? No way. To coin a phrase, most of our elected representatives are gutless wonders. To show a little more compassion -- OK, they're prisoners of their own sloppy thinking, their inability and acute unwillingness to see that democracy and "the market" (aka "the financial sector") are not only not synonymous, they're in intense contradiction. They're also prisoners of their own rhetoric. You know: all that guff about how the collapse of the Soviet Union proved that socialism didn't work. Capitalism is still in the running to take the whole planet down with it -- something socialism hasn't managed yet -- but they don't talk about that. I am profoundly grateful for Senator Bernie Sanders and a few others, however. I also continue to be impressed by AlterNet's coverage of the issues behind the crisis and the bailout. The huge challenge is to translate these complex-to-the-point-of-esoteric issues into terms comprehensible by lay people. "Lay people" here, I think, means non-economists and non-financiers, but that doesn't mean I think the economists and the financiers have a clue about what's going on. "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun. The highbrows quote Shakespeare and Goethe; I quote Tom Lehrer and James Keelaghan. Honi soit qui mal y pense, or If this be treason, make the most of it! (That's Patrick Henry.) Check these out: "The Really Hard-to-Swallow Truth About the Bailout," by Joe Bageant. I think Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus, is fucking brilliant. I almost wish I could be Joe Bageant, but there's no way a class-privileged WASP from New England could be a cigarette-smoking redneck from Winchester, Virginia, so I take courage from the knowledge that from our ridiculously different backgrounds we've managed to arrive on pretty much the same page. "Here's How to Fix the Mess on Wall Street," by Michael Moore. I adore Michael Moore. Is there a "Lesbians Who Adore Michael Moore" contingent out there? If so, I'll join it. Hail to thee, Fat Person! You helped us see the light! (That's a riff on Allan Sherman. He was recounting the injunction of his World War II parents: "Clean your plates! Children are starving in Europe!" What he said was "Hail to thee, Fat Person! You kept us out of war!" I'm trying hard not to believe that these financiers have done what they've done, and not done what they've not done, because of testosterone, or adrenaline addiction, or psychopathic behavior. What I'm believing instead is something I've noticed in my own life: that cash is tangible, countable, I know what I've got because it's a weight in my wallet; that checks are less real, but still I have to move my hand across the paper, writing date, payee, amount in figures and amount in words, then my signature. My body is involved in the transaction; therefore my mind is too. But after I pass my credit card over to the clerk, or type the number into an online form, the money that changes hands is invisible, intangible, uncountable. These financiers spend their days and nights manipulating things that barely exist. Small wonder they think they're in a giant casino that has nothing to do with real people in the real world. I love what Joe Bageant wrote:
It's all sleight-of-hand. Smoke and mirrors. What lawyers and accountants do behind closed doors. Where did the world we really live in go?
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