Zeitgeist Failure
In an age of
gross zeitgeist dysfunction -- when untruth, delusion, and deception
rule - politics is mere advertising, which is to say surface shimmer
playing on the public's wish-fulfillment fantasies. The trouble at this
moment in history is that the American public's wishful fantasies are
inconsistent with the circumstances that reality offers to us and the
choices for action that they present.
President Obama's
historical role will be seen as a wish-fulfillment totem for late 20th
century progressive liberalism - the first black president. The
Democratic Party apotheosized the genial young lawyer with his appealing
family in order to demonstrate the triumph of social justice, which was
their great struggle of the era. Evidence of that is the striking
divergence from the get-go between Mr. Obama's Hope and Change
advertising and his sedulous defense of pervasive racketeering at the
highest levels of polity once in office. Otherwise, you must decide
whether he was a tool of the giant banks, or a dupe-made-hostage to
them, or simply too clueless to understand what was required in 2009 -
namely the break-up and reorganization of the banks plus hearty
prosecution of their executives for massive swindling (along with
reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act). I voted for him in 2008, by
the way, since the wish-fulfillment motif moved me, and also because of
the horrifying McCain-Palin opposition.
In office, then,
Mr. Obama quickly proved to be a different breed of porpoise than the
voters bargained for. He let the Wall Street privateers run amuck
another four years, aided with colossal infusions of
conjured-out-of-nothing "money" from the Federal Reserve. He let loose
the demons of a high-tech totalitarian "security" state with every sort
of electronic surveillance, citizen data-mining, and drone spying that
innovation allowed. He stood silent like a Banana Republic store
mannequin after the supreme court decided that corporations could buy
elections (he could have pushed loudly for legislation or even a
constitutional amendment to redefine corporate "personhood"). And of
course, he continued to prosecute the absurd war in Afghanistan where,
after nine years, US forces are unable to accomplish the only aims of
being there: to control the terrain and to moderate the behavior of the
people who live there.
Hence, the appalling spectacle of
the Democratic convention last week, with its odor of ideological
bankruptcy, stale rhetoric, and empty promises. The party seeks only
validation of its cherished fantasy: the social justice of reelecting
the first black president. And all it really has to offer is
cheerleading to that end - with some social justice table-scraps tossed
to the lesser totems of social justice politics: women, assorted ethnic
minorities, and gays.
Meanwhile, the "advanced nations"
of industrial civilization all spiral into coordinated disintegration,
especially in the realm where economy meets finance. Economy is about
what we actually do to stay alive: make things, trade things, grow
things, run things. Finance is supposed to be about maintaining the
flows of accumulated wealth to support these things we do - with a
modest service charge for the financiers who do the work. But in the
great divorce of truth from reality in our time, finance is only about
pretending to maintain these "capital" flows. In fact, it has
degenerated into a set of looting operations, swindles, frauds, and
political dodges, and it is on the verge of blowing up.
There's a fair chance that global finance (and trade) will blow up this
season leading to the US elections. The nations of Europe are stuck in
an intractable predicament. The European Union can't control the fiscal
operations (taxing and spending) of its sovereign members, and it only
pretends to be able to lend them the money to cover the interest
payments on their previous loans. That shuck-and-jive is now headed for a
climax. But the situation is not materially different in the USA and
Japan. In one way or another, they are bankrupt, too, as are probably
most of their commercial banks. China's banks are certainly a fiasco,
since they are government-run, with no independent accounting oversight
whatsoever. China does have a big cushion of US Treasury holdings, huge
stockpiles of industrial metals and cement, and many new tons of
recently-acquired gold. But they are also hostage to the bankrupt West's
lost appetite for "consumer" goods, and tens of millions of laid-off
Chinese factory workers could foment political upheaval in a delicate
time of regime transition coming later this year.
The
antics of the ECB, the US Federal Reserve, and all the other central
banks in conjuring ever more money-out-of-nothing draws us toward that
event horizon where faith is lost in a faith-based money system. The
only question really is whether wealth destruction (deleveraging, debt
default) out-paces currency destruction (inflation). My own guess
continues to be that wealth destruction wins that contest, with massive
unpayable debt sucked into a black hole, and then all the advanced
industrial nations waking up one oddly warm morning to find their
standards of living destroyed.
As a political matter in
the face of all this, the big question is how we will reorganize daily
life - the activities of a whole culture - to comport with the reality
of a compressive contraction in economic reality. It also includes the
shape and content of the consensus we construct to explain to ourselves
what is happening. The obvious epic failure of the two major parties in
the USA to even begin this necessary work may propel this country into
an historic political convulsion to attend the financial implosion.
Imagine, for instance, if the failure of international banks leads to
the rapid paralysis of trade supply lines and then to empty shelves in
American supermarkets.
People complain about "the size
and burden of government," but our problems extend to the size and
burden of everything, beginning with the number of human beings now
vying to occupy the planet and moving to the size and scale of every
activity supporting them. Truthful political leadership would engage in
preparing the public for a long "to do" list of necessary tasks - from
the return to Main Street economies that will follow the inevitable
collapse of WalMart to the reorganization of food production when
agri-biz style farming fails from scarcities of cheap oil, phosphates,
and capital for revolving loans. Include also the rebuilding of
transportation networks not based on cars and airplanes and the painful
reconstruction of a monetary and banking system based on the rule of
law.
This is the true work of the future: the rebuilding
of these systems. All the blather about "jobs" from the presidential
convoys is based on looking backward to a way of life that is ending:
the age of giant everything, especially corporations. The days of
cubicle serfdom are numbered. Useful, gainful work in the decades ahead
will be much more about how you fit into your local community. The word
"job" may even become obsolete - a curious artifact of the industrial
past. Which party is preparing young people for local agriculture and
all the value-added activities around it? Which party understands that
the national chain-store model of trade is doomed and Main Streets all
over America will have to be re-activated? Which party understands that
we're in the twilight of mass motoring and commercial aviation? And what
are they doing to prepare for the implications of that?
The two doddering parties want to promise more of what we've already
got in a world that doesn't have anymore of that to give. The result is
likely to be that we will go through all the noisy motions of the 2012
elections only to find ourselves plunged into a political crisis
possibly worse than the Civil War.
Sidebar on How "Smart" We Think We Are
TV commercial seen during the Women's finals of the US Tennis Open:
Cadillac is bragging that they have replaced the old dashboard
knobs and toggles with a "smart" iPad-type control system. Has a car
company ever done something so fucking stupid? The whole point of knobs
and toggles is that you can keep your eyes on the road while adjusting
things by feel. An iPad you actually have to look at to
see what you're tapping on. Expect a colossal death toll from buyers of
the latest Cadillacs in the next couple of years. I suppose there's
poetic justice in the automobile age winding down on a note of such
supernatural idiocy.
