One can only hope

It has been a busy week in politics what with a proposed bank bailout, a presidential candidate debate and at least two overseas terrorist bombings. Economic hardships always seem to bring out the worst in people. Understandably, I suppose when the certainty of your next meal is in doubt. Why we, as a species, insist on treating our fellow humans worse than we treat the lowest feedlot animal is beyond my comprehension. (Not really, I have my convictions and if you read between my lines they become obvious) For most Americans, the economic downturn is the premier issue of their daily lives. In truth, the daily inconveniences and terrors of our domestic lives are almost all directly associated with economic concerns.

Since the Democrats abandoned the no bankruptcy provision of their proposal in response to Republican demands I am inclined to side with the House Republicans who flaunted their free market ideology by pulling out of the bailout negotiations on Thursday. Let the bastards who created the present stew cook in the juices of their own making. Why the Democrats did not counter with a repeal of the Republican backed bankruptcy reforms passed a few years back is beyond me. And, since the Bush administration wants to let foreign banks, foreign institutions that were all too wiling to profit from the speculation, participate in the bailout I am experiencing another knee jerk reaction against a national government dedicated to serving its citizens bailing out wealthy foreign nationals. The whole bailout stinks of corporate and class-based socialism.

Contrary to global, free market ideologues, government intervention in capitalist market policies is as old as capitalist empire building. In the US alone the unprecedented period of economic growth we are seeing coming to an end is the direct result of government policies that began in the Great Depression. When Wall Street capitalists screwed the pooch through excessive market speculation on very small credit margins in 1929 the US government under the presidential administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt began direct infusions of government capital in massive and not so massive infrastructure projects, such as the Hoover Dam and the WPA. The onset of WWII created more economic opportunities for US industry, initially through the Lend Lease Program and eventually through the massive production of war material.
After WWII, the US began the unprecedented period of national economic growth that we are now seeing end. For the first twenty-five years after the end of the War the US supplied the goods and material needed to rebuild the infrastructure of both Europe and Asia that was nearly completely destroyed during the conflict.

In the thirty five or so years since the end of the period of reconstruction, the US has pandered to industrial and financial capitalists whose only goal has been to feed their own pockets and the purses of Wall Street coupon clippers. Ideologues conveniently forget that the US had an efficiently functioning health care system prior to the Reaganization of US politics. Consumer savings and spending were in a satisfactory balance prior to the Reagan era free market deregulation of banks. I can name a dozen other areas of economic disaster we presently deal with that began as ideas and lobbying campaigns of powermongering influence peddlers in the Nixon administration and came to actuality during and following the Reagan years.

As a nation of independent and free citizens we have stood by and allowed the rich and powerful to dismantle the largest and at one time the most efficient manufacturing complex in the world in order to funnel ever larger percentages of the world’s wealth into their own pockets. The Democratic demand that caps be placed on executive compensation and “golden Parachute” buy out programs be eliminated in those companies doing business within the bailout’s legal provisions is a step in the right direction, but so much more needs done.

Where there is a will there is always a way

The government bailout of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, AIG and the impending bailouts of several other greedily run banks has everyone I know talking of nothing but money. Nearly all of us oldsters, myself included, have taken a huge hit in our mutual fund retirement programs. Unless Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and a few other multibillionaires decide to donate their huge fortunes to be divided up between each of us there will be no retirement for this old man, not that I expected one anyway.

The murder rate among young men in major metropolitan areas is at an all time high. As I pointed out in an earlier post, a direct statistical correlation exists between a rising unemployment rate in 18-25 year old males and a rising crime rate. Let’s face the truth—a high school diploma will not get a person decent work so a high school dropout will get a kid NO work, ever, in an economy whose movers and shakers have seen fit to deny the legal means of economic self-sufficiency to any citizen of low to average intelligence or from a poor, working class background. In such hopeless circumstances tempers of young, physically robust males become hair trigger short and since most money making opportunities in poor neighborhoods and bad economic times are firmly grounded in illegal activities, the seeds of desperation and cynicism fall on fertile mental ground and lead to an eventual harvest of violence.

Even those young men who have the native intelligence and financial resources to secure a BA degree have little opportunity for gainful, long-term employment after graduation, especially if they come from families whose annual income is less than $60K. The largest, single NATIONAL market (the US, dummy) that drove the international economy has been raped and left beside the road to die by the multinational corporations it spawned. Until we, as members of a failing society/economy/political structure, decide to swallow the bitter medicine and work for the benefit of all our neighbors and friends that injured roadside corpus will become a roadside corpse.

In my estimation, the will to build a successful economy and political system on the ruins of the present one is strong. More than one casual observer has made the comment that all that is necessary is a visionary government and the stepping/pushing aside of the corporate megaliths who have engineered this present international disaster. Frankly, as jingoist as what I am about to say sounds, I’m all for the economic success of my foreign brethren but not at the expense of the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of family, friends and future generations of my immediate acquaintance. I believe equanimity in all areas of human endeavor is possible if all work to achieve it.

Babby Boomers, Liberty and Freedom

I recently read a Kenyan blog (http://kenyaimagine.com/Politics-and-Governance/The-looming-class-war-in-Kenya.html) about the class differences that are growing in Kenya and how the writer expects the differences to lead to an explosion of class violence, as has happened recently in South Africa, Canada, and the US. (In the US we call such explosions a crime wave) I generally deplore violence. Unfortunately, however, the privileged few seem unable to comprehend the inhumanity that arises from their indifference to the struggle to survive of those born less fortunate than they. The practices of government and social institutions are designed and operated by the socially advantaged and those from lower social classes may not understand or be able to adjust to rules and regulations that often seem, and often are, meant to discourage those who are in the most need of assistance to survive.

At one time in the US, we managed to destabilize those violent, class based undercurrents through business practices and social legislation that recognized the responsibilities we all share in the well-being of our neighbors in a democratic society (unless they are of a different skin color, of course. The race issue in the US is closely tied to class issues but we refuse as society to acknowledge the relationship). The wonderful baby-boomer generation (of which I am a member) has managed to forget those responsibilities, choosing, instead to pursue freedom as an economic issue rather than a political one. The generation’s confusing of liberty and freedom has lead to our present circumstance where the havenots get less and less every year and the haves seem to do everything possible to make sure they can wash their hands of their political/ethical responsibility to their fellow citizens of lower social rank, lower education, and different life values.

The conceptual confusing of freedom and liberty and the perversion of a political/ethical issue into an economic one has led the Bush administration into their pursuit of a “free market” empire dedicated to “democracy.” The ill-conceived Iraqi/Afghani war that the 9/11 acts of terror brought about was stimulated by a love for liberty not freedom. Terrorists do not constrain freedom. They constrain liberty in the hope of gaining the political advantage necessary to constrain freedom. The present economic downturn caused by energy price inflation restricts liberty of movement rather than freedom of movement. As of yet, citizens of the US do not need national ID cards or papers of movement to travel or move about in their daily affairs. We are free to go where and when we please. However, economic concerns created by the increasing cost of energy hampers our ability to exercise that freedom. For all but the wealthy, our liberty to travel when and where we wish has been constrained by economic concerns.

To some extent this economic constraint on liberty has always been present in a socially stratified society. In the past, free men without the financial means to own a horse or boat were economically restricted in their movement to where their legs could carry them and their ability to feed themselves as they traveled. The latter restraint was and in some areas of the world remains the greatest restraint against liberty. Deny or restrict a regular supply of food and drink and the liberty of movement is denied or restricted through a physical inability to move or through the knowledge that movement will deny access to a meager but sure supply of biological fuel. In the most basic sense we can see that social stratification begins with an economic restriction of the liberty of movement.

Until recently, all these constraints against liberty were sites of class conflict within the US that were resolved politically through a rule of law dedicated to the democratization of freedom and liberty. In the last forty years the forces that have always struggled to restrict both liberty and freedom for their own gain have shifted the battleground between classes from the political arena to the economic. Their tactic was simple and brilliant. They declared the political battle for democratic equality won in the US and shifted the battle to controlling the means of production. Baby boomers were so busy pursuing the false promise of eternal sexiness they failed to recognize or oppose the economic erosion of the hard won civil rights of the class wars fought in this country in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In fact, the accumulation of wealth is a disease that enables personal liberty at the expense of political freedom. The stoics of both the oriental and occidental ancient worlds recognized moderation as the way to true freedom and liberty. When the spirit is free and unfettered by the concerns of wealth the body will benefit. When we citizens of the US finally realize that true liberty and freedom exist independently of the accumulation of wealth we may make strides to ensure that a true democratic freedom will exist for as long as humanity survives.

Mom and Pop Operation

My father and mother were children of the Great Depression. They were born and raised in the Appalachian hills of western Pennsylvania at a time when moving from town to town was done most efficiently on foot or by horse, when survival for a family depended on getting a deer before the snows set in. My mother had her first child (not by my father) when she was 15. My father had to put aside his ambitions to become an artist because such talents were not conducive to feeding a large family of siblings and cousins. As a boy I remember my father trying to save an ailing fruit tree by reciting an incantation during the full moon while urinating in a perfect circle. My mother read auras and believed their color indicated good health or impending illness
My father eventually became an analytical chemist, and my mother spiraled ever deeper into schizophrenia. Both hustled and embellished their past in order to survive in a world that demanded they forget their past and tailor their lives to the demands of an ever changing present in the hopes of profiting in an as yet to be determined future. In the end they both achieved what they set out to achieve, which was to eat regularly and keep the poverty wolf away from the door.
The point? I sat in a barber’s chair a few days ago and heard stories of my father’s talent for developing specific products and goods that I know he purchased from a wholesaler as a marketable end product. I also know that my father’s formal education became more extensive with each graduate degree I earned. Pop was the consummate salesman/hustler. He manufactured an authoritative social standing appropriate to making the sale of the moment. His products were always legitimate and of good quality and value. He never, to my knowledge, cheated anyone and always stood 100% behind whatever he sold. What he had learned as he moved from his Appalachian, backwoods upbringing was that people are driven to action by perception not actuality. People must believe before they act.
My mother was the perfect believer. She constructed a world that differed from my father’s only in the intended audience. My father’s audience was those around him while my mother’s audience was herself. He built himself in order to survive in the world. She built the world she could survive within.
We all have strategies for coping with the everyday challenges of the world. In every circumstance, we must move those around us to believe in the truth of our existence. Without that belief, we drown.