Sunday, September 27, 2009
A great deal of media time has been devoted to the role racism has played in the objections by Congress mostly and the well financed lie-mongers to Obama's universal health care goal. As has also been chewed over, another factor is the objection and fear of the massive changes he proposes in just about every sector of daily life. If you are laid-off, male, of color, and in your fifties, there is a good chance future employment may be impossible, demeaning, and below past incomes.
Underlying all of these vey real and very frightening conditions and embarrassing behaviors is that "the game" is changing, irrespective of efforts to keep things the same. And there is the underlying belief by many that things will go back to where they were pre-meltdown. That last on is fanatasy!
One of the leading indicators of the inevitability of this game change is that there will be increasing bank failures or bankruptcies and that, as a result of more reduced availability of both short and long-term credit, there will be increasing unemployment. In the same way as Japanese bankers have resisted to resolve "bad loans" and to continue to extend credit to failed enterprises, American bankers have looked the other way to their "bad loans" and have not dealt with negatively priceless credit default swaps that are still on their books and that seem to go unreported. What else did Obama's stress tests not report about these problems that would leave many big banks "insolvent"? All of this is covered over by reports of quarterly profits and money for less outrageous, but nevertheless outrageous, bonuses that seem to reward accomplishments to garner fees and to invent derivatives on life insurance policies. Who among them is getting credit for changing the game to chart a less risky but still profitable future? Watch out! There will be calls for more bail out federal monies.
The federal government's investment in the insurance, banking, and automobile sectors is based on some sort of quid pro quo that there will be no more of what brought them down. But, in the meanrtime, there is little evidence that different profit and product goals have been seriously studied or planned to be implemented. The advertisements for American made automobiles claim that the new vehicles are, all of a sudden, much more fuel effficient and now "green". More of the same old game using faddish words and catch phrases to convince the public that change is already underway.
One of the most important potential game changes that is not yet so evident or forthcoming is military and policy decbates about our conduct of the Afghanistan war and the tone of political reactions to the possibility that the US may "pull back". It's not just that we are wasting human lives and increasing the national debt in a country more corrupt than Vietnam with Taliban financiers everywhere and dangerous influcences by Pakistan. It is that even President Obama who has previously taken the position that this is the "important war" has to deal with these facts that have become more obvious. Many advisers have proposed shifting the role of the military away from counterinsurgency to training local forces. Assuming he chooses this option, how does Obama reverse himself to deal with these stark realities, and deal with the heat from the same folks who are trying to destroy him on the health care issue?
There is little help from the chattering class and experts to explain and support the notion that this war highlights the futility of war and the fantasy that the US can build viable economies and democratic practices in places where the new American sponsored government wants to keep things the same corrupt way. More to the right there are the usual suspects like Bill Kristol and the persistent team of outspoken conservatives that believe in their hearts that to deny additional troops (that eventually leads to a political hole we got into in Vietnam) is nothing short of a retreat from winning the war and a threat to our national security. The real threat to our national security are those friends and foes we have in the Middle East that are supporting not only Al Qaeda and the Taliban but a host of other terrorist groups we monitor but do not reveal as different and even minor threats. But enough of these unreported groups can put together enough resources from these donors to deliver what is commonly called a "dirty bomb" to anyone they choose. Obama is, like most politicans, still focused on American power to combat the enemies that our media continue to milk for sales of one sort or another, whether they be newespapers, TV, blogs and so on.
But even here there is slight evidence that the game about war is changing. Though very late, after amost 8 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is finally a lot of attention by the media on the debates in the White House and in the military about continuing the current so-called mission in Afghanistan. What is surprising about this sudden awareness of alternatives to outright war is the amount of detail, not enough in my book, about the realities of a very corrupt recent election of corrupt Karzai and his family ties to drug-dealing and to the war lords who have a great stake in keeping the status quo going on in the same way it has been in play for centuries, even millenia.
My friends call me an uncontollable optimist on the matter of "the game". Please do not confuse what I think is the inevitable change in the game with other hardened and somewhat naive liberals that change must be forced as the result of the tribulations that economic recovery will necessitate. In my mind, not unlike the reasons for the fall of the Iron Curtain, we, including the Defense Department and the bankers/financiers, just can't afford to go on the way we have been doing since the end of WWII. to do so is to encourage more melt-down and the loss of America's standing abroad.
It has been clearly demonstrated that the private financial system is just as corrupt, self-driven, unmindful of risks to investors and clients as they and the rest of the private sector accuse government of being of being a blundering giant that wil take all of our freedoms and at the same time continue to be inefficient, meddliing, and corrupt. The most damning piece of evidence on the private side is the forces that "caused" the meltdown. "Caused" is a blame word that unfortunately applies in this case. The most damning piece of evidence of government corruption, in particular fomented by the previous administration that took things to their extreme, is that the Fed, in particular, just wasn't watching the meltdown happen but, as its Chairman testified, was surprised.
I am not going to repeat the prescriptions for changing the game that have been flying around the media and have merit. My concern is that there will be great difficulties finding the right people to not only do the dirty work of overseeing in the most complete way changing the game. My concern is also that instead we may find ourselves unable to imagine a better way. We have been so dysfunctional for so long that people have gotten used to conflict, war, inaccessbility to social equity and the chance to resurrect and expand the meaning of "inalienable rights" that we may experience a long "grey" period as the Japanese have. Obama has so frequently laid out his vision of America's future that his words have gotten "cold" and unbelievable to too many voters, e.g. his falling polls numbers. But at the same time, there is little publicity about him that reinforces my belief that he is the only leader of the highest quality in the world who can start to take us all by the hand and walk us slowly toward a different life in our own country.
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