For a quick read I have bolded some key points.
What follows is a short, bleak portrait of the consequences of an indulgence and denial that is destroying our children and grandchildren’s future.
There are times I look at my daughter and despair for her generation. While my generation and subsequent generations indulgently partied through and beyond the wee hours of the disco era, our selfish and careless celebration was launching her generation into a dismal future, a future that many people still deny.
It is 1979, and "It’s morning again in America," and no one was denying it except Jimmy Carter and a few other "defeatists." It has been morning since Ronald Reagan convinced us that there was nothing wrong with America and that Jimmy Carter was simply a pessimist who was too weak to be President. There was nothing that we couldn’t do, and there was nothing that we couldn’t have. And the price we had to pay for all this was - nothing. All we had to do was admit that everything was fine and that a positive attitude, pride in our country, and fervent patriotism would pay for everything that we wanted. No cash, no credit check, no down payment, no interest, and no payments until - well - forever. Those who disagreed with this economic Eden and agreed with Carter were simply swept away in a deluge of euphoric indulgence.
Contrary to the Reaganites sunny prediction of an endless economic Eden, the consequences of "morning in America" have been building relentlessly and inexorably since its dawn. While we were denying ourselves nothing, we were also denying that there was anything wrong with our excessive self-indulgence. We wanted to be completely free - free of any constraints to any of our desires. We wanted no one to regulate our behavior and we had a champion in Ronald Reagan. So began the period of personal and financial deregulation and the all-out march toward a completely unfettered free market. Morning in American was bright and sunny with nary a cloud in sight. People could be trusted to do the right thing; they just needed that bureaucratic government to stop getting in the way of economic progress. Neither individuals nor corporations needed to have all of these unnecessary controls and regulations; they could regulate themselves. It was an endless successions of indulgent one night stands with no commitments, no consequences and no responsibilities. It worked - for some and for some of the time and for a time - on the surface.
It worked so well that the Depression of 1929 became more urban legend than history. And the lesson of financial incest that triggered and exacerbated that financial crisis became lost lessons that no longer applied in this free, deregulated market. Finally, the legend of suffering, famine and families living in squalid "Tent Cities" in shacks made from crates, wooden pallets, cardboard and scraps of discards began to die as the generation that had suffered it died. The world in which they eked out an existence from day to day became unimaginable to generations who knew little other than satisfaction and indulgence. We had lost the ability to imagine what it would be like just as we had lost the ability to imagine what war was like.
Besides, now was a new time, and it could never happen again because the government was backing the banks with FDIC and bailing out every institution who succumbed to their own hair brained scheme because there was an endless supply of money. Immediate personal pleasure and immediate financial gain were walking hand in hand through the morning toward a sun that in America would never set - or at least that’s what they thought. However, the regulations that had been protecting the system which made FDIC a reasonable insurance were being eviscerated by Reagan, Bush and as a final touch Bill Clinton. With a single signature he removed the lessons of the Great Depression when in 1999 he signed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Banks, investment institutions and insurance corporations could now merge in a monetary intercourse. Financial incest was now legal, and rampant speculation after rampant speculation was being born daily.
But in time the birth defects from this unholy union began to show - savings and loan crisis, junk bonds, mortgage crisis, bank failures, lending institution collapses and stock market meltdowns. And who was monitoring the action in the back seat of the Chevy? The couple in the back seat - the financial institutions. Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, and especially Bush 2 had seen to it that the regulatory institutions that were set up after the Great Depression to insure that the excesses that caused it did not occur had been tainted with the hideous label "bureaucracy" and purposely understaffed, rid of contrarians, infiltrated by nay-sayers, de-fanged of powers, and denied control or protection. Instead, Presidents and the Congress relied on and applied the "Just Say No" and the "abstinence" principle to the financial sector, and they worked just as well as they had for drugs and unwanted births. All the while these events were unfolding, the denial continued and in many sectors still continues.
Currently, the economic crisis is seen as the most critical, but in the minds of the public that could change to the war if suddenly soldiers start dying in greater numbers, and the next crisis may even replace that one, and then the economic crisis may return. Even if economic conditions reach the levels of the Great Depressions and twenty five percent of the population is unemployed and another unknown percent experiences extreme hardships, there will be a perceivable end to it. Each of those while disastrous have a limited life.
The most important and dangerous denial has been the environment; the immense devastation of the global environmental disaster to which we are heading would effect 100% of the world’s population. It exceeds all other issues. While many prognosticators, politicians and Americans acknowledge that the environment is an important issue and even a critical issue, most, if not all, merely focus on the quality of the physical environment, comfort, and the economy. However, environmental concerns like global warming will do more than take away our health, comfort, life style, and financial security; they will take away our basic freedoms. And the worse the environmental situation is the more freedoms we will lose. It will bring a night so dark that we will soon regret and then forget that there ever was a "morning in America."
Without a healthy ecology there will be less justice, less freedom, less liberty, and a decimated economy. This is the world that I will leave my daughter.
When that happens, my daughter and most Americans will forget our Declaration of Independence, and will deem our Constitution a prohibiting liability to achieving essential environmental protection and financial stability. Both documents will be suspended or even discarded. Nothing will matter to the majority of the people in this country except the air they breathe, the water they drink, the food they eat, and the shelter they need. All other considerations will become secondary and eventually drift away. They will be consumed by the daily struggle to meet their basic physiological needs, and they will believe anything or anyone that promises a cure.
They will then be looking for a savior, and many or most Americans will relinquish their rights to whomever they feel will solve the global environmental disaster and promise a return to the comfortable life. No? If 911 caused so much fear that we readily went to war and relinquished some of our rights, then a global ecological disaster that effects the entire population might certainly cause us to give up all of our freedoms.
Thus, the logic is simple. To preserve their freedoms, they need a healthy planet far more than they need an empire or a world dominating military or a free, deregulated marketplace. So that they can keep what freedoms they have left, all of our decisions must be made in favor of having a healthy planet.
Unfortunately, whether we admit it or not, there is an undeniable obstacle to that healthy environment. It is the result of our extreme self-indulgence and our greatest denial - the National Debt. We have denied its critical nature since Ronald Reagan and economic experts decided to redefine the basic fundamentals of economics and finance. It seemed to be a minor inconvenience that very few Americans understood and still don’t understand. But it is the single most important obstacle to saving our planet. Without the financial resources, we will not be able to invest in developing the technology needed to reestablish a healthy environment. It is also apparent that no matter how healthy the economy had been, it had not resulted in a decrease in the debt. It is not because we had no way to get the money to start paying down the debt; it is because we have not summoned the selfless desire. We have, once again, been in denial. And we have been aided and abetted by economic pundits and politicians who have said that paying down the debt is not necessary.
Not only is it necessary; it is critical.
One of the hard truths is that we are addicted to denial, and that addiction has created a myriad of problems. The most important of those problems is the impending environmental disaster, but the greatest obstacle to solving that problem is the National Debt. It is the President’s job to challenge us to face the hard truths and then lead us to conquer them. It has been a long time since we’ve had that kind of President. Instead, we’ve had the proverbial indulgent parent. They may tell us that we can’t have everything but when we stamp our feet a little bit, they are afraid that we won’t love them or vote for them so they give in and deny us nothing.
We must begin to look at our economy in a different way. It can no longer be seen as a pleasure machine whose purpose is to satisfy material desires. We need to change that before it is changed for us by an even bigger disaster than the current crisis. The next President must look straight into Americans’ eyes and tell us in unequivocal terms that the party is over, and the bill is long overdue. Those people who partied the most and ran up the biggest tab need to pay their tab first. It is time to sacrifice. It is time, contrary to George H. W. Bush’s statement that "The American way of life is not negotiable," to realize that if we want to survive, all of it has to be negotiable.
I have looked into my daughter’s eyes and told her what we have done to her generation. She is not really aware of it yet. She does not deserve what we are leaving her and her generation, but they need to know about it. We all know this. I hope that they blame us and never forgive us; maybe then they’ll be different - if they get the chance.
We are denial junkies mainlining indulgence.
I keep having this image of a half sunken Statue of Liberty, and George Taylor shouting "You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"
He was only a few words off. He should have said, "You Maniacs! You contaminated it! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper."
"The Hollow Men" T.S. Eliot