The Low
A November 2015 article on Huffington Post by Ben Hallman detailed how the movie “The Big Short” refuted the bogus argument that giving home mortgages to poor people caused the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-2009.
Here is a clip from near the end of the movie, in which financial trader Michael Baum, who uncovered the criminality of Wall Street and the big banks which actually caused the GFC, falls into despair as he realizes that the US government was going to bail out the banks and none of the banksters’ criminal behavior would actually be punished. "In a few years,” Baum says dejectedly, “people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people."
The failure to impose justice on Wall Street and the banks created a populist backlash that led directly to the election of Trump in 2016. This was not unforeseen. I was one of several bloggers who warned that there would be an economic crash, and that it would provoke a populist revolt. And that if Wall Street and the banks were saved instead of disappearing in the self-immolation of their own blind, mindless greed. that populist revolt would be taken over by right-wing reactionaries.
Other bloggers who wrote similar warnings included Jerome a Paris and Stirling Newberry (who both blogged here back then) and Ian Welsh. David Sirota, who published a book in 2008, The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington, also used to blog here.
The Obama administration came into office with a massive mandate to punish Wall Street, and completely failed to do so. And the populist revolt happened, and it turned reactionary. This is why I was horrified when Vice President Harris, in her otherwise great debate with Trump, mentioned that Goldman Sachs supported her economic plan.
Saying that is like saying STDs support a program to build new health clinics.
Look, Goldman Sachs and its fellow banksters are the problem. As I used to tell my Congressmen whenever I could buttonhole him, there will never be an economic recovery of widely shared prosperity unless Goldman Sachs is destroyed.
But, Wall Street and the banksters were not put in their place when we had the chance. And now we are faced with the result: a reactionary populism targeting the poor and immigrants.
The high
Go to 55:31 in this video, and listen to Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo explain why the United States is based on a proposition — that all humans are created equal — and that anyone who accepts that proposition is welcome as an immigrant.
This is why any attack on immigrants is also an attack on the experiment in self-government the United States embodies. Are we a torch to the rest of the world, or not? What message is sent if we allow Trump and his movement to basically eliminate immigration, including mass imprisonment and deportation of millions of people, and even denial of “birth-right” citizenship to migrant children born in the United States?
In a twisted sort of way, it makes sense. Trump’s message — the message of Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation and the whole lot of them — is that America is no longer the Land of Liberty, so don’t be poking your nose in here.
But please listen to Guelzo explain so much better and more beautifully than I do.
What was the American Civil War Really About? with Allen Guelzo (video — start at 55:31)
[School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership, Arizona State University, April 23, 2024]
Question at 55:31: … would you not say that this battle for … liberal democracy is not generational, and we have to … meet and fight in every generation.
Guelzo: Let me tell you why, and in the most fundamental way. Lincoln said, at Gettysburg, that this was a nation dedicated to a proposition, that all men are created equal. I want you to reflect for a moment on how utterly novel that idea was, even in Lincoln's day: the idea that you could create a nation dedicated to “tracks of ink on paper.” That was how one European reactionary scoffed at the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. European reactionaries like Joseph de Maistre sneered at the American experiment. The idea that you could build a nation around propositions, sentences, reason! No! said de Maistre, nations are built historically; they are built upon race and tribe and clan and ethnicity and language and religion and soil. That's what makes a nation.
They thought it was ridiculous, that Americans thought they could confect a nation out of assent to
propositions. “You mean any Tom, Dick and Harry that gets off the boat and reads the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence and says, “yes,” can be part of the American experiment?”
To which the American experiment replies, “Yeah. Yeah.”
It takes 1500 years to make a Frenchman -- you got a lot of wine that has to be consumed, you know -- it takes 1500 years to make a Frenchman. But you can become an American in 20 minutes. You read those propositions, and you say, “Yeah, I sign on to that.” Brother, you're in!
The idea that you could make a nation out of people like that just seemed preposterous to people in the 19th century. To other people outside the US, they thought it was bound to collapse in on itself. And they took the Civil War as a case in point: “See, it is collapsing … !”
Which is why Lincoln thought it was so important to defend it.
That was why Lincoln could look out at those semicircular rows of graves in the Soldiers National Cemetery at Gettysburg, and say, “From these honored dead we draw increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.
Lincoln looked at those graves, he looked at the dead who were buried there, he didn't see in them the armies of Europe, armies of debased peasants who had to be flogged into obedience to their officers. These were ordinary people, these were clerks, these were farmers, these were lawyers, these were businessmen, these were shop owners. And they're buried there, in that cemetery because they saw something in this thing called democracy that was worth making the ultimate sacrifice for.
That, Lincoln said, that is what refutes the people who scoff at the propositions.
But the weakness is this: they are, after all, only propositions. We cannot simply say, well I'm an American because 16 generations of my family have been Americans. We cannot say I'm an American because my ancestor came over on the Mayflower. My ancestor didn't. I had no ancestor on the Mayflower. I had no ancestor in the American Revolution. I had no ancestor in the Civil War. They all came afterwards.
My great-grandfather from Sweden, came in the 1880s. He couldn't wait to abjure the king of Sweden. He wanted to be an American. He copied out in pencil the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address. They were his because he assented to them.
Because they are propositions, every generation has to repeat that assent. Every generation has to dedicate itself, over, and over. We can't fall back on who we are descended from. We can't fall back even on language, or culture. We have only those propositions. Every generation has to dedicate itself to those propositions for democracy in America to live.
It has its weakness, yes, it has its great weakness. But it has great strength because it means that anybody – anybody, my great-grandfather, your great-grandfather – can be part of this thing. There's nothing that stops them from being part of the American experiment…
