In April I saw a man standing on the steps of city hall, dressed in grimy Army surplus fatigues, waving half a soiled American flag and chanting, “Dee-troit is the future of America. Dee-troit is coming to this city.” He kept on chanting until two police cruisers arrived and removed him.
In June four banks were held up in the space of three days. The perpetrators were white, Mexican and African-American. The white guy hit two different banks on the same day. The police determined that the holdups and perpetrators were in no way related. The Mexican crook made off with more loot than the African-American.
I felt like I was living inside a kaleidoscope of images and sound, information, voices and pulsing neon signs -- or that I was permanently high on powerful hallucinogens. Everything was chaotic and haphazard, unsure and uneasy – the streets were alive, and dangerous. I couldn’t get over the thought that my life and all the lives being lived around me had been reduced to its price in dollars, its perceived value on the great market, no different from rice, corn, oil, soybeans, prescription drugs, condoms -- everything had been turned into a commodity.
For the rich it was the best of times, a heyday, a non-stop XXL extravaganza, even while the number of poor swelled to a degree that was becoming difficult to ignore. I saw this with my own eyes and from inside the poor’s ranks. It became commonplace to see senior citizens carrying bags and boxes into the food bank. As more homeless people appeared downtown, local merchants bombarded City Hall with complaints. “They’re killing my business,” one storeowner told the local newspaper. “I wish they’d go someplace else.” But there was no place else any better, and most places were worse. To quell the complaints of the merchant class, the police chased the homeless from public benches and public parks, and made life untenable for people who had resorted to living in their cars or RV’s.
On the 4th of July, as I watched fireworks arc over the waterfront, I remembered the protests against the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, how along with 5,000 others I marched up the main street of town, while millions worldwide did the same, to the sound of chants, drums, horns and whistles. Overwhelming public sentiment against the invasion was brushed aside by Bush and Blair like lint brushed from the sleeve of a suit; the Coalition of the Willing, which, I now remember, included the nation of Togo, was unstoppable. Calling it a “war” even though Iraq had never attacked or threatened American soil, fear mongers and liars at the highest levels of the government had decided on a preemptive strike and no amount of public protest could dissuade them. During the days of Shock and Awe I learned that language is one of the first casualties of war, that civilian deaths become collateral damage and that the meaning of the word “enemy” changes as needed to fit circumstances. Iraq was destroyed, thousands were killed and no WMD were ever found.
Time spins forward to the fall of 2008. The world financial system is on its knees, reeling after years of unregulated high stakes gambles on derivatives, CDO’s and other exotic financial instruments nobody really can explain. Without so much as ten minutes of public debate, billions of taxpayer dollars are handed to the Secretary of the Treasury – a Wall Street alum and a man of stupendous personal wealth – who demands and receives a blank check to operate as he deems fit, meaning few rules and limited oversight. Scared witless, Congress accedes to this demand. Banks and investment houses that should – by every holy law of the great, infallible market – have lost their shirts and been allowed to die are made whole by the taxpayers. Once again language is a casualty, as the transfers are called a “bailout” rather than more pejorative terms like welfare, assistance, the public dole. Had someone proposed that a billion dollars be devoted to end poverty or homelessness or provide jobs for the unemployed, there would have been a revolt among the ruling class.
For more than a month the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico dominates the news, but once the well is capped, the story disappears. Worst oil disaster in US history, unknown long-term ecological damage, and it’s right back to business as usual as if nothing happened. Where did all that spilled oil go? Is Gulf seafood safe to eat?
Free market myths permeate every facet of life, from the corridors of government to the classrooms of public schools. Standardized test scores become the benchmark of learning and schools make no excuses for teaching to the tests. Educators stop talking about critical thinking skills, the curriculum narrows, focuses obsessively on math and language arts; schools that fail to meet mandated targets are singled out for sanctions. Teachers and their labor unions are excoriated. Aspirants for high political office are compelled to promise to run government like a business.
I sense that the center is collapsing, pulling apart. I sit in the small park across the street from the building where I once worked, on a low wall at noon, watching people I once bid “Good morning” to come and go, thinking about the job that kept me on the lower end of the middle class for seventeen years. Until the economy tanked I was a low-level public servant with a salary, health insurance and a pension. First came forced furloughs, then pay rollbacks, and then a dozen of us were released, separated, terminated on a Friday afternoon just before close of business, escorted to the front door by the personnel director. Fiscal austerity.
American-style capitalism has run amok, turned on itself as it does periodically, and now gnaws its own bone and marrow. Marx rolls over in his tomb and smiles. Sensing a potential tipping point, the wealthy class goes on the offensive, using all the machinery of power at its command. While average citizens lose homes and jobs in droves, every major American newscast includes a stock market report, as if the stock market and citizens hold a common stake, as if the stock market and the economy are one and the same. The Supreme Court reinforces whom it really works for when it rules against the Federal Election Commission in the Citizens United case. Predictably, anonymous millions pour into the campaign coffers of candidates pledged to defend and advance the Big Business agenda. The wealthy and well-connected manage the terms of public discourse, keep the focus tight on budget deficits and tax rates at a time when state and local governments are slashing services for the poor and unfortunate, slashing public education, slashing health programs for the young and elderly. I think the country has lost its soul, its heart, and its compassion. As I dumpster dive for bottles and aluminum cans I decide that I don’t give a fuck about budget deficits. Nobody I know does either. I want a roof over my head, heat, and a refrigerator, but what I want most of all, more than anything in fact, is my old bed, my blankets and pillows. I could sleep for twelve days straight.
Madness passes for sanity. The cost of the country’s foreign wars go largely unmentioned, and the budgets for the wars are sacrosanct. Iraq takes its place alongside Germany and Japan and Guam and Spain and Iceland and Italy and South Korea as hosts to permanent American bases. I hear a cost estimate related to the Afghan debacle: a million dollars per soldier per year. Only a hedge fund manager can wrap his head around such numbers.
All across the country people are furious, raging, but their temper is misplaced, directed at the government when it is corporations that are culpable. Why can’t people see this? Don’t rant about tax rates, I want to scream, rant about the horrible waste in Afghanistan and Iraq, the sprawling, costly, out-sourced Security-Intelligence apparatus that grew out of 9/11. Rant about tax subsidies to Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Agriculture. Follow the money from your wallet, through the laundering operation that is the United States Congress to the clients of powerful lobbyists. That is the root cause of your economic pain, the death of your American Dream, the reason your children face a future of diminished expectations.
Ask why the income gap between rich and poor is so wide.
But nobody listens to street people. We are glanced at but not seen; some of us are assaulted, even murdered, our bodies left by the railroad tracks for days. No one mourns for us.
Capitalism and heroin junkies can never sate their need. The rules of the game demand more, more, more, no matter the cost to people, communities, or the environment. More, more, more -- drill deeper, grow bigger, cut corners, whatever it takes to get more, more, more. Satisfy the beast.
A bearded man in a black suit two sizes too small, wearing a crown of thorns fashioned from aluminum foil, stands on the corner by the museum, screaming at the top of his voice: “It’s the end of the world.” The man seems to be the only person within a hundred miles not in total denial; he has walked in the valley, studied the dust, read the signs and portents. “They own your soul,” he screams at passersby. He will not be the least surprised when the sky darkens and the sun goes out for good.
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