Living History

Maybe we're all overblowing this, but it's hard to escape the sense that we are all sitting on the fault line, shaken by the perhaps the largest economic discontinuity in history. It may not be the most catastrophic--I think there's reason to believe our economic and civil institutions are more robust than in 1929--but certainly the largest. And it won't just be an economic discontinuity. I believe it may very well mark a major political realignment.

There is now pretty good polling data to demonstrate that, at least for the time being, Americans are overwhelmingly laying the blame for the banking meltdown at the feet of the GOP. And by GOP, read "market conservatives." And that blame is well-laid, I think, because, of course, "market conservatives" have been anything but since the sainted Ronald Reagan. Reagan began an era of aggressive deregulation, delirious deficit spending and regressive taxation that reached a vicious and insane crescendo during the Bush presidency. Progressives, like myself, have been waiting for almost thirty years for the other shoe to drop.

Given the poll numbers I linked to above, not to mention Barack Obama's current command of the electoral college, it looks like Democrats will have to clean up the mess, as they did under FDR. No candidate entering October with a lead in the polls has lost since 1960, with the exception of Carter, who was arguably an outlier because of a fresh military fiasco in Iran and a post Oct-1 debate. And so the economic discontinuity triggers a political discontinuity, as it must.

But I wouldn't look to a return of FDR. What we see will be something...different. Oh, sure, on the surface, it will have some similarities to the New Deal. I, for one, don't believe that Obama, a man who must be acutely aware of his place in history, will allow a gazillion-dollar tab for the bailout to clip his wings. I think he'll double down, and invest in technology, infrastructure, education and health care to a degree that will make techno-progressives swoon and paleoconservatives pop aneurysms like a child pops bubble-wrap.

But there'll be more to it than that. There'll be a new regime of regulation and government involvement in the economy--government investment in the economy. I just don't see how Congress, short of a full-scale and catastrophic Republican mutiny, can seal this breach without buying up huge amounts of equity in banks and mortgages. The government is going to be a shareholder--which means we'll all be shareholders. "The last nail in Ronald Reagan's coffin," as some GOP congressman put it. Aye, and good riddance, I say.

What kind of New New Deal will Obama and a Democratic Congress shape from this catastrophe? I don't know, because they don't know, and there'll be more than a little of Making It Up As They Go Along involved.

The biggest implication for what we're living through right now may be this: the greatest economic discontinuity in human history is taking place contemporaneously with the biggest ecological discontinuity--global climate change, loss of habitat, and a global mass extinction event. Will the shape of what emerges from the meltdown and the new ascendancy of progressivism (if, in fact, it materializes) be for the good or ill of our species and world?

Who the fuck knows? Fasten your seatbelts, because right now we're flying dead stick.

Conspicuous by His Absence

Bunch of old white people just got up in front of some cameras on the hill to announce the largest government spewage of cash in history. Don't know what the details are yet, but everybody showed up to crow about a resolution. Pelosi, Frank, Paulson, Shumer, Blunt, everybody.

Everybody, that is, except John McCain. I've been concerned that McCain would try to take credit for whatever emerged and crow that his leadership (the Chinese fire drill of the last few days) was what made it happen. But he's nowhere to be seen, and his name was not mentioned. Indeed, it seems that if anybody got credit for the breakthrough, it was Pelosi.

Sarah Palin, Secessionist

Below is a video of GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin addressing the convention.

No, not the GOP convention. The AIP convention.

The Alaska Independence Party was founded in the seventies by Joe Vogler, who argued that the referendum that brought Alaska into the Union was unlawful, and that Alaska could and should secede from the United States. Volger died in 1993, and his last wish was that he be buried in Canada, rather than under American rule. The party has remained a player in Alaska politics, and many elements within the party continue to espouse secession. They've also toyed with the idea of becoming part of Canada. The party's website features this prominent quote from Vogler:

"I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions."

This is the party to which Palin belonged in the 90s, with whom she still cultivates good relations, and whose convention Palin is addressing from the Governor's Office, telling them to "keep up the good work."

Talk about Country First.

Republic Death Watch

You can make a pretty good argument that the outlook for the future of our Republic is less than rosy. Me? I'm an optimist. I still think the United States can command a leading economic, geopolitical and military position in this century. But you have to admit that a lot of the signs are bad. Huge swaths of the American electorate believe in angels and ufos, but can't name a single Supreme Court justice. Everybody has an opinion on Iraq, but I've noticed that the most boisterous supporters of the Bush foreign policy can't find Iraq on a map or name a single country that shares an Iraqi border. We're still wringing our hands over race, gender, and sexual orientation, and millions of Americans reject modern science in favor of Palestinian Iron Age creation mythologies. And of course, we fiddle while the planet burns.

The latest sign of a moribund republic? The Senate releases a report that basically comes out and says the Bush Administration lied the American people into a $3 trillion war, and the only pundit who really covers it is...Jon Stewart.