Happy Illusions

“It is style and story, not content or history or reality, which informs our politics and our lives. We prefer happy illusions. And it works because so much of the American electorate, including those who should know better, blindly cast ballots for slogans, smiles, the cheerful family tableaux, narratives and the perceived sincerity and the attractiveness of candidates.” Chris Hedges, Truthdig

The Tea Fire shoved politics off my table. When a wildfire devastates people in your own family, it’s hard to focus on the goings-on in Sacramento or Washington D.C.

The fire was a stark reminder of the ephemeral nature of life, how in an instant the course of a life – no matter how rich or seemingly protected – can change. In a matter of hours on a preternaturally hot and windy November night, hundreds of people lost a lifetime of memories, investment and their place in the world. You have to walk in the burn area, through the ash and charred timbers, see with your own eyes the collapsed roofs, blackened bricks and torched oak trees to fully grasp the devastation.

But politics has returned now, as it always does, because human beings are political creatures, and the decisions made in the capitol city of any nation carry implications for real people with real needs. Americans are riveted by the economy, desperate to know how bad it will get and how they might be personally affected, while Detroit cries for a bail-out and once proud and arrogant CitiBank calls for a helping hand. The irony is as stark as the hypocrisy and I don’t know where to start my tirade, other than to say that lavishly compensated and coddled corporate CEO’s know no shame.

The bottom line on Detroit is that the Big 3 have been sliding into the shitter for years, stubbornly wedded to shoddy designs and crappy quality. Sorry, UAW members. (The Ford parked in my carport is the most service-prone vehicle I have ever owned, and never, ever again will I plunk down my hard-earned credit on a Ford, GM or Chrysler product.) While the Japanese focused on quality, the Big 3 focused on the slick commercials they would show during halftime at the Super Bowl. While Honda and Toyota were getting out front of hybrid technology, the Big 3 were rolling out one gargantuan SUV after another, with names like Explorer and Expedition, Yukon and Tahoe, rugged luxury for suburban soccer moms who never ventured within a hundred miles of an unpaved road.

Now Detroit wants taxpayer money to execute an about-face, but let’s be honest: six months or a year from now, the Big 3 CEO’s will be back in front of a Congressional committee asking for more money, more concessions, more assistance, and they will spout the same arguments about the auto industry’s importance to the American economy, how it cannot be allowed to flounder or fail, blah, blah, blah. Congress will cave in, as it always does, and the slow death will continue, limb by limb, organ by organ; two of the Big 3 will merge amidst the usual corporate rhetoric -- happy talk of synergy and complimentary strengths and how the merger is good for America and American workers – and that too will fail.

But what was the point I was sidling up to when I got off on a Detroit tangent? Yes, Mr. Hedges, whose piece I came across a week after the election, when Sarah Palin embarked on her magical media tour. The hapless Governor from the Alaskan Frontier didn’t seem to grasp that her ticket was on the losing end of the electoral vote count or that she was the anchor that helped pull it down.

Palin is the poster child for Hedges’ thesis that American voters are easy marks for slick media images, sunny personal narratives, and campaign messages that bear little or no resemblance to reality. Why journalists following Palin didn’t burst out laughing when she said she was keeping her options open for 2012 is beyond me; she won’t be any more qualified then than she is now because the Governor of Alaska is Stupid. Flat stupid. Dense. Moronic. A politician who claims, as Palin does, that the economy will right itself if Government will just get out of the way of the people, is simply not to be taken seriously. The problem, Governor, was caused by lack of government oversight of the financial system, and that lack was systematically engineered by free-market ideologues.

Palin can run amok in Alaska without doing much damage because the state is sparsely populated, remote, and rich from petro-dollars and Federal subsidies. If the people of Alaska want a dolt for a governor, fine, they have the right to keep electing Palin, but do us all a favor and never again allow that dingbat into the lower 48.

Rush Limbaugh’s millions of faithful listeners also add credence to Hedges’ argument. There was Limbaugh, two or three days after the election, two and a half months before Obama will be sworn in, calling the economic downturn the “Obama Recession.” Rush contended that the financial markets were rattled by the mere thought of a Liberal in the White House – as if the past eight years of economic mismanagement by Republicans (and some weak-kneed Democrats, too) never happened. If we’re going to give this recession a name, let’s be fair, include the architects and the enablers, and call it the Phil Graham-Alan Greenspan-Robert Rubin-George W. Bush Recession.

Limbaugh shouldn’t be taken seriously, either, but I can see thousands of his adherents nodding in agreement when he spouts nonsense about the “Obama Recession.”

Meanwhile, the President-Elect is surrounding himself with Clintonites and moving closer and closer to the safe center. No one should be surprised by this – campaigning is one thing, governing another. As Eric Alterman wrote in the Nation, “Obama will disappoint us.”