“I believe in God and I believe in free markets”
-Ken Lay
Sometime yesterday afternoon, my mailman arrived with the post. It never ceases to amaze me that, for a modest fee, you can hand a man an envelope and have it arrive a few days later anywhere in the country. Someone put something with my name on it in a blue box, and yesterday it came to me. Amazing.
It is the weight of the world, carried by men and women in blue shorts and overflowing messenger bags. Even though, these days, I get more bills and advertisements than things I really want to see, I still get the Nation, the New Yorker, Harper's, and, every once and a while, a hand-written letter from a correspondent—yes, I still have a few of those; there are still tidings from afar, news of the world, a letter signed love, yours, truly.
Yesterday, it was Harper's. And this morning, I sat on my stoop with a cup of too-hot coffee and paged through it. The “Easy Chair” section of Harper's remains my favorite. They are essays in the true sense of the word. Attempts, tries, tests, experiments—from the French essayer. I'm trying to understand the world, they whisper. I can't help think, when I read good essays, that blogging, with all it's faults, yes, is purest form of essay writing: A little short, quick publishing times, sometimes poor polishing, but blogging is trying—experimenting. That, though, is a thought for another essay.
Thomas Franks writes about Enron. It's roughly the ten-year anniversary of the shocking news that Enron's success was crooked, that it's Armini-clad executives were little more than a gang of thugs. And what a surprise that was! I am shocked, shocked, to find gambling in this establishment. Shocked, shocked to find the world of speculation a craps table.
Enron made a church out of deregulation. It made slick ads about the godlike wisdom of “open” markets. Markets know things mortal men do not. Markets are the province of the best of the best, the in-the-know, the supermen of the world, unfettered by the restraints of the normal. The invisible hand of the market may as well be the hand of god, raising up the righteous and laying low the weak. It should go without saying that this is a perversion. But the world of Wall Street is different than yours or mine. It's the world of Thrasymachus, where justice is the advantage of the strong, and the weak get their just deserts. Socrates himself couldn't change the market scions' minds.
And despite the fall of Enron, and the fall of the banks, and the coming fall of the House of Murdoch, there's still that ideological, religious thread running through the arguments for deregulation. But there's something else, too.
These days, Franks writes, “We deregulate not because we live in some enlightened “New Economy” where the forces of history love us and want us to prosper' we do it because we are afraid. We do it because the John Galts who rule us won't have it any other way. If we want them to create jobs, we must do as they instruct.”
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We have plenty to fear, it's true. Today's Republicans have moved beyond the realms of reason and reality. There's nothing to fear, they say, from climate change or peak oil or massive unemployment or, of course, deregulation. There's nothing to fear, they chant, from America defaulting on her debts. That last countertruth is the most pressing today, what with the near-daily negotiations and posturing and press releases. True, some Republicans know the dangers, but they are, it seems, too cynical to see put the brakes on the train of crazy that powers the conservative movement.
The zeal to raze government and the wanton desire to slash and burn is like a fever burning its way through the Republican psyche these days. And what a surprise that is. I'm shocked, shocked to gambling in this establishment. I'm shocked, shocked to find that the party of drowning government in bathtubs would risk calamity to achieve their ends.
So why, why do some persist in the naïve belief that the Republicans would take any deal—even one that gives them near 90 percent of what they want? Why when the red meat the Republicans want is total dismantling of the gears of government?
Of course, something must be done. That's the trouble. The Galts want what the Galts want, and if we don't deal with the cynics, we'll have the crazies with which to contend.
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The only alternative is the bully pulpit, and President Obama might be catching on. Between offering to take the scythe to entitlements, he's telling Cantor that he's not bluffing, that he'll take this to the American people. But is he catching on too late? The progressive uprising in the states, in Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, and Ohio came about from standing up, but the anemic response on a national level frightened me as much as the Republican overreaches.
Now, we're up against a wall. In a few weeks, we'll default, and the work the Obama administration has done to bring us back from the abyss will be for naught if America can't make due on her debt.
So what's to be done? The Galts want what the Galts want, and they might just pull the trigger if we don't meet their demands. They believe in God and the free markets, and they'd let the government burn if we don't get in.
The answer is the cynics. Mitch McConnell's plan, as refreshingly open with its cynicism as it is, might be the solution. But the desire for grand bargains is overwhelming for this administration, it seems. There's something noble in that. After all, what could be more healing to our sick body politic as a dose of good faith. And the desire to negotiate with people who might put, as McCain so cynically claimed, country first is a desire to see our country healed.
But it's time for something else now. It's time to prod the cynics in the only way we can—by putting the fear of Wisconsin into them. And the only way to do that is way the President began—to remember what Democrats are and be true to it.
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It never ceases to amaze me that we can drop a physical thing in a blue box and have it travel across the country. It never ceases to amaze me that once in this country we said that our elders would not go hungry. It never ceases to amaze me that we have a social safety net.
We achieved these things through a repudiation of the golden calfs of deregulation. We achieved these ends through remembering that government can do big things.