You can only predict things after they have happened.
- Eugene Ionesco, from Rhinoceros
"Well, Senator, I can't predict the future, and I've been wrong quite a few times now." - Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke at the Senate Banking Committee hearing.
It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. – David Foster Wallace, 2005 Kenyon College Commencement Address
Lately, all my dreams are liquescent. For instance, I am driving my car through a city neighborhood when the road becomes water upon which I can still, impossibly, drive, but in which nude women are swimming, though they wave me on through as though nothing is unusual. In trying to avoid the expanding pools of water, I end up getting irrevocably lost. Although I find a parking lot of terra firma in a housing project, as I walk away from the car, I realize I have no idea which way the Longines School of Music, my apparent destination, resides. Already late for a concert, the peripatetic journey through neighborhoods that exist like islands in the middle of huge swimming pools leads to labrynthine plots, M.C. Escher-like landscapes, and a destination that seems to be moving away with every step I make towards it.
As I am reading through the Discussion Draft of the ‘‘Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008’’, I reach page 12 and a section called, SEC. 103. CONSIDERATIONS. This Platonic leap-of-faith section deals with the idea that, "In exercising the authorities granted in this Act, the Secretary shall take into consideration—" and then lists nine items clearly intended to placate the seething masses, e.g., (1) protecting the interests of taxpayers by
maximizing overall returns and minimizing the impact to the national debt; and (3) the need to help families keep their homes and to stabilize communities, as vital considerations for the vaulted Secretary to, you know, think about – for a minute or two before handing over billions to his ilk on Wall Street under Section 101Purchases of Troubled Assets:
(1) AUTHORITY.—The Secretary is authorized
to establish a troubled asset relief program (or ‘‘TARP’’) to purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase, troubled assets from any financial institution, on such terms and conditions as are determined by the Secretary, and in accordance with this Act and the policies and procedures developed and published by the Secretary.
The section continues on listing the delineated and, essentially, unregulated authority of the Secretary to buy, buy, buy and sell, sell, sell. Liquidity is everywhere.
Friday morning, despite the fact that there was no definite answer as to whether or not John McCain would be participating in the debate in Mississippi, there were, floating about the internets, images of a smiling McCain countenance in front of the requisite furled stars-and-stripes background replete with blazened text declaring, McCain Wins Debate! As I begin the incessant pattern of pacing that will take me from room to room, from television to computer and to the kitchen, where a debilitating obsessive nervous eating disorder is rapidly developing, a rhinoceros walks past me through the living room and dining room, disappearing down the hallway that leads to the bedroom. This is not my first encounter with the horny, odd-toed ungulate, and my disgust is palpable; I find the beast repugnant. Nevertheless, I can not let it distract me from my disquisition into the subterfuge of St. John the Savior’s suspension of disbelief and this Bush Administration Brobdingnagian boondoggle being perpetrated upon the lower 90 percent of the citizenry. Although, at this point, I am still uncertain if I have the requisite temperance, in every sense of the word, to watch the upcoming debate, I can clearly hear myself screaming at the television even as I catch the fat-assed shadow of a rhino growing then diminishing on the opposite wall – I am satisfied with this inner perspective, but I have to acknowledge the literal encumbrance of physical existence is making me tired. In my dream, the women simply walk out of the clear waters, away from the path of my vehicle, smiling, while their brown skin glistens. As much as I try to stay afloat, my hope seems to sink like Numidian stone into a fathomless lapis lazuli pool, into the benthic fauna.
I come across this tidbit: Alan Fishman, the CEO of Washington Mutual Inc. for only a few weeks before the Seattle-based thrift failed, would be entitled to $19.1 million in severance and bonus pay.
This just happens to be 10 times what the average American worker, one with either a high school diploma, a bachelors degree, or a masters degree makes in her or his lifetime – from age 16 through death – Mr. Fishman "earned" in 17 days. I think what I am feeling is something like the opposite of schaudenfreude – not in the Buddhist sense of mudita, i.e., rejoicing in others’ good fortune, but more like the Greek nemesis, "a painful response to another’s underserved good fortune", as defined by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics.
A quick insertion of real-time politics: The ubiquitously weepy John Boehner and his cadre of Republican sycophants just gave a news conference of how they are supporting this "bailout bill" after they reworked it to the benefit of the taxpayers. The fact that this is a total fabrication, that the "benefits" they talk about were negotiated days ago by Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank, and a bi-partison concensus of the Banking Committee belies the fact that these deregulating, tax-obliterating, free-market recipients of the largess of banking lobbyists – the House Republican thuggery – has simply pulled another McCain stunt, to deflect the fulsome stench of this governmental maneuver to further direct the endless profits of an unfettered investment class into the hands of a chosen few at the expense of the vast majority. In other words, they are trying to save their asses in the upcoming elections.
Another rhinoceros walks past. I try to watch the debates but find myself in conflict with my own mind. How did I get to a place where I must contemplate the deep roots of my own values versus the fact that a simple vote will present diametrically opposed realities as existential? Logically, I rarely agree with my own candidate and am so appalled by the other that my antipathy is visceral. During the debate, I have the volume on the TV turned way up so that I can pace from room to room – my empathy is like an exposed nerve, and watching Obama’s expressions drowns out his voice, like listening to someone yelling at you while your at the bottom of a pool.
It has been raining for three days. For the past week I have been jumping into every thread of the progressive blogosphere, if I can find a way to jump the thread:
And once again, I have that sinking feeling
The sinking feeling, the abject hopelessness that I, and over the half of the electorate, felt when the Supreme Court decided the 2000 presidential election. The sinking feeling after 9/11 when something improbably named the Patriot Act was foisted upon us, and we were told to lobby congress to pass this immediately, don’t even read it, pass it or we’ll all die. The sinking feeling when, in the weeks leading up to getting congress to sign away their war powers to Bush, in the Administration’s full-on charge to war with Iraq, Rumsfeld was on every single Sunday talk show (followed by Rice and Cheney) that this needed to pass now, or else we would all die. And now, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is on every single Sunday morning talk show, selling the need for congress to immediately sign on to a clean, i.e. no regulations, no strings attached, no oversight, bill (read this flim-flam Executive Branch power grab here and pay particular attention to [the ironically named] Section 8, Review) without debate or hesitation (sound familiar?), or we’re all going to die (like starving church mice).
The modus operandi is strikingly familiar: present "facts" of impending doom, catastrophic collapse - when was the last time you heard of a "terror alert"? (hint: 2004)- and phony "intelligence" to a closed-door congressional committee. Then announce "bold, government action" (Bush said, "I decided to act, and act boldly"), i.e. bailout (rip-off), and watch the stocks soar like it's Christmas morning on Wall Street. As Naomi Klein said recently, imagine waking up to find that all of your credit car debt, your mortgage, all of your bills and medical debt had been erased (and that someone was going to pay you 20-40 percent of the original value of all those decades of junk in your basement).
"During boom times, it's profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate. When those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue. But rest assured: the ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalization for deep cuts to social programs, and for a renewed push to privatize what is left of the public sector. We will also be told that our hopes for a green future are, sadly, too costly." (emphasis mine) - Naomi Klein, from Free Market Ideology is Far From Finished (9/19/08)
In other words, the right-wing wet dream of burying forever the entitlement programs of FDR and Johnson, i.e., Social Security and Medicare, will be realized, environmental restrictions on companies will be dissipated as too costly, money for infrastructure projects will be non-existent, and so on down this ideological worm hole. After all, the final days are upon us, and only the chosen few shall enjoy the spoils until the sky opens up. The Final Act of the Bush Administration is now underway – the new war and martial law against the rioting citizenry will be next - making way for the Palin theocratic presidency. – a blockquote of my own comment excerpted from my own diary, or did I just dream it?
John McCain, looking like a cadaverous Tim Conway, is taking credit, with the help of his obsequious twins Eeyore and Sniffles, for solving the economic crisis. God bless everyone.
I don’t know if I can handle the dichotomy that is developing between me and me in the mirror. The me behind my eyes is frenetically trying to decipher the code of this absurd drama playing incessantly. The me before my eyes is no longer recognizable to the other me. Which of me is real?
In Eugene Ionesco’s play, Rhinoceros, the ubiquitous, thick-skinned rhino represents fascism (coming soon to a theater near you), communism, and other -isms of the day. To all the secondary characters, as the rhinoceros crosses the plane of reality as an innocuous non sequitur, it is seen as beautiful, exotic, alluring. One by one the characters begin turning into rhinoceroses. The masses always acquiesce. The individual is always lost.
"I see myself torn apart by blind forces rising from my innermost self and clashing in some desperate unresolved conflict . . . it is clear that I can never know who I am, or why I am." – Eugene Ionesco, from Notes and Counternotes
The DFW quote above is excerpted from a commencement address he gave at Kenyon College in 2005. I chose it for its heartbreaking prescience. He began his talk with a parable (saying that this didactic device is de rigueur at US commencement speeches):
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
The rain has finally stopped. Citigroup and Wells Fargo are said to be bidding for Wachovia. This whole past week has centered on the demise of economic entities "too big to fail".
"A sale to either Wells Fargo or Citigroup would further concentrate Americans’ bank deposits in the hands of just three banks: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase
and whichever bank acquired Wachovia would control more than 30 percent of the industry’s deposits."
They have pulled off the greatest swindle upon humanity in recorded history.
I have to sleep. I seek to understand the meaning of water.