IT’S THE ECONOMY?

I am flummoxed. What is going on in “the land of the free”? The Beijing Olympic Games will be a great distraction,or not, as Americans win a truckload of medals, but who could care less? Short answer: the Chinese. There is supposed to be an election, and elections are supposed to feature debates about the economy, especially when after eight years of a feckless Republican Administration the US economy is showing some disturbing signs that, I imagine, will invariably have an deleterious impact on the Global Economy. Nothing. Silence.

Of course, Americans could consider how it is possible to have elected and re-elected the most incompetent, or if not incompetent dishonest, president in history. That would be an exercise that would require a certain amount of looking into the mirror and understanding how the political system works to mostly disenfranchise everybody other than the small minority that run it. Let us not got there because it may cause shame, if not guilt. Then I suppose privilege, if that is what it is, has its own logic, and once you have smashed, or co-opted, the organized working class, you can rule as you wish, and elections can be converted to beauty pageants and celebrity games.

The problem is that the United States seems to have some real problems, which the magic cult of the unrestrained free-wheeling market seems to be making worse. We will be shocked to learn that shopping is not the solution to all of life’s problems. Gorge and you shall be weighed down by trivia and unable to experience what is real until it hits you in the face, while in the meantime practice denial, the affirmation of nostrums. Of course, this is a little extreme, but surely there is a mentality that underpins the advice in the face of crisis to go shopping, as happened in the aftermath of 911 and Katrina.

The alternative view, once the orthodoxy, is that the economic system has to be managed, and the argument was about how regulations and laws should apply to avoid outcomes such as inequality and injustice. Contemporary understanding would suggest there are limits that environmental constraints places limits on economic exploitation, or at least that environmental factors should acquire tradeable economic values. There is no debate about the economy, or about the impact of economic decisions, including grocery shopping decisions, on the global and local environments.

And yet, according to Chris Hedges, via Truthdig, the economic problems coupled with the warfare state are very real, and the potential to demolish even the fiction of democracy. Never mind, he argues:

An attack on Iran, which Israeli and Bush administration officials appear set to carry out if Iranian uranium enrichment is not halted, would ignite a regional war in the Middle East and lead to economic collapse and political upheaval in the United States.

And Chris Hedges observes:

The U.S. economy is already tottering. We recently witnessed the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history, and there are fears that as many as 150 banks could fail over the next 12 to 18 months. There will be 6.5 million foreclosures over the next five years, according to Wall Street analysts. The government is furiously pumping billions of taxpayer dollars into private corporations to keep them afloat. The Congress bailed out the shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These bizarre “government-sponsored enterprises” own or guarantee half the mortgages in the country—some $5.1 trillion. The Federal Reserve evoked rarely used emergency powers to put billions of taxpayer dollars at risk to stop the meltdown of a non-bank, Bear Stearns, which it never regulated. More than $300 billion has been written down so far. Losses, by the time we are done, could exceed $1 trillion.

The already staggering debt generated by the war in Iraq would mushroom with an attack on Iran. Fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran, we would soon be struggling to pay off a debt of at least two or three times the present amount. This is a weight the U.S. economy cannot bear, especially as the dollar tumbles against the euro and other major currencies.

My sense is that if the connection between the state of the economy and the hubris of the over extended military spending is not ignored, and the political determination not to realistically address the problem, together with the issues related to global warming, the world will suffer as will the United States. I suspect that a monopoly media, beholden to the military-industrial complex, and living off advertising and shopping, cannot, and is not interested, in performing the independent watchdog role that liberal democracy requires. Let us hope that the corruption and corrosion of democracy is not at the tipping point where pretense gives way to reality.

UPDATE:

1.Glenn Greenwald interviews blogger Digby, and provides some explanations. the key issue is how do electors make their decisions about candidates, and it seems that policy issues and reasoning do not determine their judgments. Still, I would be very surprised if under current circumstances distractions work. I am expecting – and I could be wrong – that in the wash up race will not have have mattered, despite the structural racial and political divisions of American society. Class is a better indicator of political outcomes manifested as social and economic results, which direct life chances.

2. It seems to me, and I did not mention the, that both the Republican and Democratic conventions, especially after the drawn out Primary season, are a waste of time. Perhaps some Republicans might have a change of mind about their candidate, both the current one and the previous one.