They Live

Congress yesterday defied the President, both of the men who may replace him, the Secretary of the Treasury, their own party leaderships, and essentially every concentration of unelected monied interest in every civil society of the entire world.

Was this a cynical and venal refusal to save their nation from economic calamity in the name of ideological purity? Or was this, finally, real democracy in action? Perhaps both, but only the latter matters.

There is a tension that exists among all holders of governmental power; they must ask themselves, "Am I here to do what my constituents tell me, or am I here to do what I think is best?" Henry Paulson and George W. Bush clearly believe in the latter, a belief made easier due to the fact that these men are either unelected or are elected on a basis other than one man, one vote.

The House of Representatives yesterday did what their constituents wanted them to do. For better or for worse, they followed the explicit orders of those who they represent. The elites instantly condemned this course of action as an abdication of responsibility, but what does that reaction say about the elite's view of democracy?

Let's consider how "democratic" this country, which deigns to impose democracy via violence on others, really is: What members of the federal government are elected on the basis of one man, one vote? There is precisely one office in this country that is democratically assigned, and that is the House of Representatives.

All other members of the federal government, from Senators to Presidents to cabinet secretaries to CIA directors to IRS paramilitary agents, are either unelected or are elected by votes which carry vastly different weights (e.g. the Electoral College, or the "equal" voting power granted to a Wyoming Senator representing 300,000 citizens and a California Senator representing 30,000,000).

This is simply to make the point that the United States is NOT a democracy; it is (or was) a representative republic, in which few decision makers are democratically elected and the most powerful men are subjected to no vote at all. The House of Representatives, then, is the only democratic institution in the federal government. We should keep this in mind while we interpret the elite's disgust at this body.

I don't subscribe to the idea that Representatives should necessarily take marching orders from their constituents. There are occasions when they are (hopefully) better informed about a pressing issue than those they represent, and it is incumbent upon them to make the tough decision and then defend that decision to their constituents every two years.

With this specific situation, however, I find myself trusting the decision of the House by default. The simple reason is that I have no rational reason to trust any member of the Bush administration. I have no choice, therefore, but to trust in democracy, even if that democratic decision is misguided. (It happens; remember, segregation was democratically protected.)

But consider what we would have to believe in order to take the position of the elites in this country. We would have to believe that the President and his advisers are a) competent and b) trustworthy. This element of trust is of nearly divine importance in any functional society, and I have lived without it for most of my life.

We MUST be able to trust the President and his men because the Presidency has evolved (or degenerated?) into the most powerful office in the world and is responsible for decisions that most Americans simply could not make an educated choice on.

For example, the invasion of Iraq. Remember that one? Remember how no average American citizens were clamoring for war in 2002, because Iraq hadn't done anything to us? It was the Bush administration that introduced the idea of starting a war against Iraq and sold it on the premise that they alone were privy to information that made it clear that a failure to act, and the peoples' failure to give them a blank check, would bring catastrophe to America's shores.

I am always disconcerted when someone dismisses the utter abuse of trust that got us into Iraq as nitpicking and irrelevant Monday morning quarterbacking. That attitude shows either a profound ignorance or a profound disregard for the sinews that hold a "democracy" together: Trust.

No rational person would trust George W. Bush. So when his appointees come to me and say, "Your failure to give me a trillion dollars of your money would bring catastrophe to America's shores", I say, well, I say, "How fucking stupid do I look to you?"

The tragedy, of course, is that they might be right; how would I know? I don't understand for a moment the intricacies and balances and speculations and contradictions of the global money markets. I don't. Since I don't, I'd like to be able to defer to administration "experts". But since I have no rational reason to trust these men, my only remaining option is to defer to the only national democratic institution, the House of Representatives.

The men who were in charge of regulating and monitoring these markets for the American people told us that the fundamentals of their purview were secure. Trust us, they said. We got this. A week later, the same men told us that the fundamentals of their purview were so endangered that only the biggest expropriation of wealth in the history of the universe could save them, and that said expropriation must be done NOW. Trust us, they say. We got this.

Well, I don't trust them, and perhaps people should consider the cost of a people who doesn't trust its government then next time a member of that government says "we KNOW where the weapons of mass destruction are." If my refusal to trust those men ruins my nation's economy, that's on them. Believe me, I'd love a reason to trust these guys.

The House's rejection of the bailout plan may well have been a catastrophic mistake. I acknowledge that possibility. But you know what? Everyone dies of something, so it may as well be democracy that kills us.

A Trilli

Don't you dare compare me
Cuz there ain't nobody near me
They don't see me, but they hear me
They don't feel me, but they fear me
I'm illy
-Lil' Wayne (or Henry Paulson)

This week's "proposal" (which was a "proposal" in the sense that Hitler "proposed" to his army that it invade Poland) for you and I to bail out private banks to the tune of one trillion dollars is difficult to blow out of proportion, even for obsequious blowhards such as myself.

Here's one way to frame it: this is the biggest theft in the history of the world, perpetrated upon a prone and prostrate public under color of legality, a "color" so pallid that it would embarrass a serf on a feudal manner. How it can be foisted upon a supposedly free and fiercely independent people for whom property rights are religious in nature is beyond my capacity to comprehend.

Here's another way to frame it: this is the biggest power-grab in the history of the world, perpetrated not by Kubla Khan or Saddam Hussein, but by the unelected, unimpressive, and unbelievably unconstitutionally-minded Henry Paulson.

Last night, in a piece of hard-hitting journalism, I learned on NBC nightly news that Mr. Paulson is a down-to-earth outdoorsman. Thank God! If only Saddam Hussein had been an avid fly-fisherman, perhaps we could have come to some peaceable arrangement with his crimes.

Here, in the plainest English is what has happened:

First, several private businesses operating in the "free market" failed.

Second, members of the federal government decided (on what authority, pray tell?) that these businesses could NOT be allowed to fail. Tens of thousands of American families could fail due to health care costs and mortgage woes, of course, but these businesses simply could NOT.

Third, an unelected member of that government, Mr. Paulson, proposed taking one trillion dollars of your money and my money and everyone else's money to GIVE to the failed private companies.

Fourth, the Congress, the only body legally allowed to spend our money, gets in line to dress this crime with ex-post-facto legitimacy, much as the UN did after the US invaded Iraq.

Much like Madame Clinton's health care proposal, what we are seeing now is a synthesizing of the worst of both worlds, of the risks of capitalism and the tyranny of socialism. We see profit being privatized and failure being socialized.

When private companies operate on the free market, whether it's a cocaine dealer or a Dunkin' Donuts or Bank of America, it's largely on its own. The upside of this arrangement is that entrepreneurial risk-takers can conceivably generate huge profits, which they then keep for themselves since they took all the risk. The downside is that such risk can, and usually does, end in failure, in which the risk-takers and investors lose their money.

When socialized entities operate, whether its a fire department or an army or a library, it's protected by the collective faith and credit of the society. The upside of this arrangement is that these institutions cannot "fail" in the sense that a private bank can. The downside is that they are seldom efficient, their investors are coerced, and even less seldom are they "profitable" in the purely capitalist sense.

What we have here is the worst of both worlds. We have private institutions which have failed, but not before they have reaped huge profits which have gone directly into the pockets of individuals. Now, after those institutions have failed, we are informed by our government that our society cannot "afford" such failure, with the implication being that they should have been socialized in the first place.

All indispensable institutions should be socialized, e.g. police and firefighters. If the failed banks were indispensable institutions, why were they left to the vagaries of the free market, and why were their executives allowed to pocket millions in profit?

The ex-post-facto labeling of the failed institutions as indispensable is the problem, for it creates a situation in which you and I must bail it out, but only after all the profits have been spirited away. So it was private until it failed. And now it's ours. Profits were privatized. And now, failure is socialized.

I understand that these things happen. I understand that they have happened before. But what we must ALL understand is that, when they did happen before, FDR took a vastly different approach.

When private businesses folded 80 years ago, FDR did indeed expropriate vast sums of wealth from the American people, but the whats and hows of his actions illuminate how far we have fallen as a society.

FDR did two things. Firstly, he had Congress expropriate the money, which seems rather...quaint? cute? Constitutional? Whatever it was, I'll take Congress over Henry Paulson any day. Secondly, he used the people's money on....THE PEOPLE.

FDR took money from the people, citing an emergency, and used that money to put the people to work. They built roads. They built sidewalks. They preserved national parks. They painted murals. They wrote books. They performed plays. They regained their dignity.

Bush (in the guise of good ol' Hank) took money from the people, citing an emergency and....gave it right back to the private businesses which had just failed. Nobody will get a job from this trillion dollars. Nobody will get their house back from this trillion dollars.

No, what we get is the peace of mind that we will wake up in a world tomorrow made safe for insurance companies, if not for homeowners or breadwinners. And what use is winning bread if the government can steal it from you with the excuse that you and your children come second to the health of a private bank?

It used to be that the government would rob you to feed you and give you a job. Now, the government robs you to feed the bank that just kicked you out of your house.

Kobayashi World

The greatest trick the Republican Party ever pulled was convincing America it didn't exist.

It has been a surly and substantive experience watching the GOP convention this week. The irreducible blend of cynicism and political genius only reminds us of how brilliant the GOP is at winning the presidency, a skill the scale of which is only matched by the self-same party's propensity for sub-par governance.

If John McCain wins this election, it will be the most brilliant political maneuver in the history of American politics. While we should keep in mind that the Democrats' nomination of a sexy, skinny, 3-point swishing African with the middle name of Hussein gives the Republicans an artificial boost, there has rarely been such broad agreement among the American people on any issue other than this: George W. Bush has been a catastrophe.

If 80% of Americans agree that the country is headed in the wrong direction, we must ask ourselves two questions: when was the last time that many Americans agreed on anything, other than the weeks following Pearl Harbor or 9/11? And secondly, how is it that the governing party in such a discontented nation could harbor any hope of re-election?

Watching Sarah Palin and John McCain address the GOP delegates made me think of what it must have been like for the Soviet leadership to listen to Khrushchev after Stalin's death. Khrushchev waited until Stalin was dead to tell his peers what they already knew; Joe Steel was a sociopath and Communism would not survive unless Stalinism died with Stalin.

It turned out that Communism would survive Stalinism, but Communism could not survive Communism. Still, because Khrushchev owned up to and acknowledged the sins of his peers, he stalled history by 30 years. In a very cynical sense, this was political genius.

And in the same sense, the nomination of John McCain and his selection of Sarah Palin is the most brilliant maneuver of American politics in recent history.

The GOP should have no chance of holding onto the presidency. The only way they could do so would be to nominate a candidate whom they openly despised. And they did so. Conservatives HATE John McCain. He is an apostate in their eyes. And that is exactly why he might win.

McCain is running as a Republican on the platform of "throw the bums out!", conveniently omitting the inconvenient fact that he is one of the bums. The GOP is an incumbent party whose candidate is running on a platform of radical realignment.

This is a brilliant strategy by McCain, but it would have been in McVain had he not nominated Sarah Palin for VP. By nominating Palin, McCain has ensured heavy conservative turnout, and Palin's story is one that will appeal to the right wing far more than that even of George W. Bush.

The GOP has no business even continuing to exist as a political entity after the last 8 years. The fact that it may actually cling to the presidency, which is has held for 28 out of the last 40 years, is beyond comprehension.

John McCain hijacked his own party, and I commend him for doing so, but as most wise men recognize, a man can be adequately judged by the company he keeps.  As Republicans go, Mr. McCain is less guilty than most, but he is still guilty of the most salient crime in America today: he is a Republican.

Vice and Virtue

I am mildly distressed by the haughty and contemptuous derision heaped upon Governor Palin by Democrats, who are suddenly appalled at the idea of a young, vivacious outsider winning high office in Washington. Apparently, only presidents should be such neophytes; vice-presidents must be elder states(wo)men.

It is also an edifying lesson to witness the behavior of the media re: the sex life of Mrs. Palin's 17-year old child. The "news" media has decreed that this is all of our business, and here I am sharing in the most private and intimate details of a child who lives 6,000 miles from me.

Can one imagine the fear that a child raised in such a conservative household must feel when she becomes pregnant at such a young age? Imagine that fear, that insecurity, and then imagine that, not only do you have to break the news to your parents, but that the assorted vipers and vultures that fancy themselves to be speaking truth to power would subsequently tell the entire world about the most fundamentally private thing that has ever happened to you.

Not to be unduly morbid, but would we be shocked if a child committed suicide in such a scenario? Just a cry in the wilderness, in the vainest of hope that these people will learn to mind their fucking business before they destroy a life literally as well as figuratively.

That aside, Mr. McCain's selection of Governor Palin raises several serious questions for me, and these questions are not predicated on the unseemly lack of respect and translucent sexism that the left-wing has employed. Put simply, I'll wait to judge Mrs. Palin until I see her in action and, when such judgement is forthcoming, her lack of a y chromosome will not be the focal point of my critique.

Ovaries aside, problems remain. Firstly is that this is the latest in a disquieting string of vice-presidential nominees (mostly Republican) that seem to hinge entirely on the premise that the man heading the ticket is invincible and immortal. In other words, there have been way too many VP nominees that nobody seriously believed was presidential timber.

Now, this may have been understandable in 1880, when the Speaker of the House was far more powerful than the president, or even in 1930, before the age of international terrorism, assassination, or the real possibility of instant thermonuclear holocaust.

But after Franklin Roosevelt died at the crescendo of World War II, after John Kennedy was murdered, after Richard Nixon resigned, after Ronald Reagen went senile, after Bill Clinton was impeached, and after George W. Bush was....George W. Bush, it is inexcusable to select a VP that is not seriously considered fit to be president.

I would argue that the VP nominees this year carry more import than they ever have. Both viable presidential candidates have serious flaws that stress the importance of a competent and prepared VP.

First for Obama. Obama is very young and very inexperienced. He acknowledged these chinks in his formidable political armor by choosing an older and far more experienced man for his VP. And, not to descend into undue morbidity, but if there was ever a candidate for assassination, it's Barack Obama. I respect Mr. Obama's selection of Mr. Biden because it indicated to me that Obama has a mature and sober understanding of these blind spots.

Now, for Mr. McCain. What are his flaws? Like Mr. Obama, his age is an issue. Mr. McCain is 72 and has had cancer several times. Now, if Mr. Obama is a special candidate for assassination, is Mr. McCain not a special candidate for natural incapacitation, whether via illness or death?

Put simply, it seems more likely at this juncture that Joe Biden or Sarah Palin will be running this country sometime in the next 4 years than the equivalent scenario prevailing in any other year.

But how great are those odds, really? Well, 4 presidents have been assassinated, 4 have died of natural causes, and 1 has resigned. That's 9 unplanned and unelected presidencies out of 43 administrations. So, over this history of our country (I can no longer call it a republic), there has been a 20% chance that the vice-president takes over upon death or removal of the elected president.

The other cynical component of all this is that the Republicans are trying to equate Mrs. Palin with Mrs. Clinton in terms of representing a radical departure from the status quo vis a vis the place of women in American politics.

I have exceedingly little love for Madame Clinton and the Democratic Party, but she received 20 million votes to be president. Mrs. Palin received 1 vote (from Mr. McCain) for her position. To say that an endorsement from tens of millions of voters is the equivalent to an endorsement from one desperate senator is insulting to women.

I'll reserve further judgement on Mrs. Palin, but the fact that Mr. McCain selected her to be a heartbeat away from being the most powerful person on Earth after meeting her once tells me quite a bit about both the style and substance of the senator.

I do feel that Mrs. Palin has the potential to shift this election to Mr. McCain. I also feel that, if this were to happen, there is the potential for Mrs. Palin to become president. I further feel that Mr. McCain did not seriously entertain this possibility and that this failure represents a fundamental lack of respect for the office he seeks.