Beer and loathingThe jobless rate is up, the economy is down, the Democrats blame Bush, Bush blames the Democrats, it's enough to drive the rest of us to drown our loathing in pharmaceutical quantities of beer. All that political posturing solves nothing but serves only to divert attention from the evolutionary details of this crisis and the fact that gimmicks don't work. Gimmicks don't workBetween the Vietnam war's "military-industrial complex" and the post World War II clarity of purpose provided by President Kennedy's "race to the moon," the American economy of the sixties roared. Then we landed on the moon in 1969, President Nixon ended the war in Vietnam a few years later, and things got worse: The oil producing countries withheld their affection, inflation skyrocketed, and Nixon tried wage and price controls. Didn't work. All the president's men got caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar, next thing we knew President Ford was trying to WIN our votes with a tax "rebate." They didn't work, either. So President Carter attempted to instill new clarity of purpose in Americans with William James' "moral equivalent of war", but none of those gimmicks worked. Nixon's wage and price controls created shortages. As the economists had predicted, the lines were long at the gas pumps. After Nixon resigned following the Watergate scandal, President Ford demonstrated his sound grasp of economics by issuing pins with the slogan, "WIN: Whip Inflation Now." (I'm not making this up.) This had no affect on the inflation rate. Nor did his tax "rebate" stimulate the economy. Ford served out his term, and was quietly replaced by Jimmy Carter. An engineer, President Carter had something his predecessors lacked: experience actually solving problems. But he was hampered by a serious political handicap: a conscience. A deeply moral man, he was not only far too thoughtful to inspire the American public with confidence, but he appointed Paul Volker (Alan Greenspan's predecessor) as Fed Chairman. Volker's mission: stop runaway inflation, restore the economy. Volker did what he was told, rebooting the economy with a recession to reduce inflation. (See: Myth: Carter ruined the economy; Reagan saved it; Fact: The Federal Reserve Board was responsible for the events of the late 70s and 80s) Few were surprised when voters replaced Carter with an actor who then took credit for the economic boom fueled by Volker's monetary policy. Requiem for a HeavyweightRonald "I don't remember that" Reagan knew what Americans wanted: an unflappable icon of "father knows best" demagoguery. While the financial markets rallied behind him and former Merrill Lynch CEO Don Regan, he joked about nuking the Soviet Union, ran huge budget deficits, and oversaw the "money fever decade" of coke snorting corporate raiders who were looking out for number one by winning through intimidation as they created an abundance of minimum wage service industry jobs in the newly emerging "temp agency" economy. Despite the Teflon President's short-comings, depression era voters remembered him fondly and, overlooking his lapses of memory concerning the Iran-Contra Affair, elected his heir, former CIA director, Vice President George "Read My Lips" Bush Sr. But George Bush Sr. pursed his lips, raised taxes, kicked up a "storm," then waxed poetic about "a thousand points of light" while the unemployment rate edged toward 6 percent. To make matters worse for his political career, the Department of Justice began its investigation of Microsoft and the FBI shot up Randy Weaver's home at Ruby Ridge on Bush's watch. Genteel aristocrat to the end, he left with a measure of dignity Al Gore would have done well to emulate. An Affair to DismemberSlick Willy the able administrator was an easy-listening alternative to the British-American aristocrat. A true child of the sixties, he had the sense of civic duty to make some hard choices, but otherwise got into just enough personal trouble with his affairs to hamstring his ability to cause too much damage. Moreover, unlike his predecessors, who acted like leaders, Clinton was an administrator who, in the Rhodes Scholarship tradition, managed by the numbers. Polls, that is. If the surveys said most Americans wanted welfare-to-work programs (and they did), then that's what they got. Short of keeping his fly zipped and saying "no" to the corporate lords and ladies, President Bill was willing to do just about anything to get our vote. Living lean in the land of plentyMeanwhile, the corporate fiefdoms, empowered by the Reagan-Bush administrations' pro-business stance (the Bush administration investigated Microsoft only because of complaints from other large corporations), and encouraged by Clinton's policy of neutrality toward corporate efforts to divide and conquer American consumers, did pretty much as they pleased, squeezing wages razor thin while commercializing everything. From the counter culture to depression, from desperate lives to sex and lies, if it wasn't commercialized, it was politicized: from the squidgiest skid marks to stained skirts to morning after sheets, we saw it all paraded through the streets on high resolution lap top LCDs. Despite one of the longer periods of sustained prosperity in modern America, however, little of that wealth got spread around. In some respects, the 1990s may be remembered as The Roaring Twenties Redux. Especially if the economic downturn gets any worse. Consumerism can be sustained only so long before the system begins to implode. Economic expansion requires frontiers, frontiers require heroes, and all the heroes are dead. Deprived of any bona fide heroes and inspired with no real vision beyond diversity, depression and self entitlement, more Americans than ever are molesting their inner child as the naked nomads lose themselves in raves, xtasy and a multitude of dissociative disorders. By November 2000, everybody was angry and civility was a lost art. A Civil ActionWeary of all the dirty political laundry displayed endlessly and in microscopic detail in the news, worn out from working so much overtime and the two-incomes required to raise a family, disturbed by the frighteningly pervasive disintegration of American families, frustrated with 3 decades of sexual and racial politics, exasperated with the utterly failed war on drugs, and fed up by conduct unbecoming public officials, a lot of us didn't even bother to vote. Those of us who did had a hard time telling the difference between Bush Jr. and Al Gore. But we knew Gore didn't seem to stand for anything anymore, the people who did (Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan) were too far out on the fringe to matter, and Bush seemed like a civil guy who promised to make everybody nice again. So, once in office, what does he do?
"After the meeting, Bush, flanked by Vice President Cheney, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), read a statement on the White House lawn pinning blame on the previous, Democratic administration." (Source: In Washington, Blame Game Intensifies, Washington Post, September 8, 2001.) Ironically, the only thing the Clinton administration did that contributed to the current economic downturn was a continuation of the Reagan-Bush Sr. policy of encouraging corporations to export wealth-producing jobs. Beyond that, Clinton exercised far more fiscal restraint than his predecessors. As others have explained and we have noted, the economic downturn is not a result of fiscal policy, but the monetary policy of the Fed and exportation of wealth-producing jobs. Just as, during the 1980s, most of the economic expansion could be attributed to Fed Chairman Paul Volker's monetary policies rather than Reaganomics. With equal stupidity, Democrats are blaming Bush for the economic downturn: "Democrats pounced on the grim economic news as evidence that Bush's economic policies are failing." (Source: In Washington, Blame Game Intensifies, Washington Post, September 8, 2001.) As they well know, the rule of thumb is that it takes 18-36 months for fiscal policy to impact the economy. So, in the long run, they can only harm their credibility by blaming present conditions on Bush Jr. What some are and all should be emphasizing is the negative impact Bush's ill-conceived tax "rebate" will have. Better yet, if the boys and girls on the Hill want to get into a pissing contest, they should do it on their own time. We don't pay them to remain stuck in the past slinging mud at one another, but to focus on the future by solving the problems of the present. It's time, boys and girls, to get back to the future. Back to the FutureMany years ago, an American President with more testosterone than political sense gave us a mission: beat Russia to the moon. It may have been an adolescent thing to do, but it was the American thing to do: it captured the essence of the true American self. We are a nation of explorers and pioneers. We adventure into the unknown and create wealth and lead splendid lives of which legends are made. As an American Indian, what I know is that the American frontier was never a place but an idea, a vision that inspired dreams and fueled the engines of creation. But we have abandoned that frontier, made to do so by aristocratic complacency and the corporate need for predictability. Aristocracies, whether appointed by monarchies or created by oligarchies, don't need exploration. When you're the biggest baron in the realm, opportunities for others to grow big pose a threat. And exploration by pioneers of new frontiers poses a threat by providing opportunities for others to create wealth and compete with the established order. Just as the colonization of the "new world" led to competition with Great Britain and the American Revolution. Exploration of space and sea offers new frontiers with new opportunities for pioneers to carve out a niche for themselves where they may fail or prosper, but where they will live, truly live, not as cogs in the corporate machine but people meeting the challenges of life with their wits, courage, determination and intelligence. We could be building cities - magnificent monuments to human potential - in the high frontier. Expansive, park-like communities housing the first pioneers to work the factories orbiting between the good earth and the silver moon, where their industrial pollutants can be recycled or safely discarded far away from our fragile blue planet's ecosystem. Prosperity without pollution: an elegant solution only a step farther out. But beyond a few deep space probes, a nice telescope and a legion of science fiction shows, we have turned our back on the possibilities because they pose too much of a threat to the established order. And the cost of doing so has been great. When we abandoned the American frontier, we lost our way as a nation. And whether we look for it down in the sea or up in space, until and unless we regain our pioneering spirit, we will never truly solve the problems which confront us today, or find our way back to the future.
What do you think? - Post your comments on the Equalitarian Forums |