Descent into Madness, Part I

“Casino capitalism is the true religion of America and provides common ground for both major parties, in spite of their differences on the role of government and the welfare state.”          Henry Giroux

I started this blog almost ten years ago, when George W. Bush was President.  Dick Cheney was running the show and the United States was waist deep in its illegal occupation of Iraq, and three years into the occupation of Afghanistan. The War on Terror was in full swing. The creepily named Patriotic Act had been enacted with near unanimous consent of Congress. Bush’s tax gift to the millionaire class was working as intended, delivering big benefits to people who didn’t need them; just about any American with a pulse and the capacity to sign his or her name could qualify for a home mortgage.

Bush, a serial fuck-up, derided intellectual activity and passed himself off as a simple good ol’ boy from Texas who believed in a Christian God, America, Baseball, and Capitalism. His partner, Uncle Dick Cheney, swaggered like a neo-Fascist and muttered darkly about terrorist threats and the imperative to kill Muslims. Cheney believed that the only way to protect Americans from evildoers was to extend unlimited power to the Executive Branch.

It was a bad and embarrassing time to be an American, and I was always pissed off, fuming, and shocked about what my country was becoming. I wrote to save my sanity more than anything else. Fear hung over the nation and for a sense of security we willingly traded our liberties and our privacy. At the time I had no idea how bad things would get in the years ahead.

Sometimes when I consider the fundamental changes that have taken place in the United States in my lifetime my head spins as if I am afflicted with vertigo. I grew up believing that the country worked because it shared its unparalleled wealth with as many of its citizens as possible. The idea of sharing prosperity was valued. My father was a working class guy, a butcher by trade, and a member of a labor union; he earned a decent wage and we had a toehold in the middle-class. America seemed generous back then rather than stingy; kind rather than cruel; open rather closed, confident rather than fearful. Our government was a force for good, it could right wrongs and protect people from some of life’s vicissitudes. Our despicable racist history could be slightly ameliorated by passage of the Voting Rights Act, for example, and the plight of the poor was taken seriously enough to prompt President Johnson to launch a War against Poverty.

How times change. In 2013, under a Democratic president, we criminalize and punish the poor.

True, the government lied about our situation in Vietnam, insisting that victory was right around the corner when in fact we were on the long highway to defeat. College campuses across the nation were hotbeds of unrest. Young people wore their hair long, and many of them, particularly in crazy California, smoked marijuana, dropped LSD and set their draft cards on fire. Hippies made my grandmother nervous. Charlie Manson and his followers put the fear of Satan in Los Angeles residents. Black rage erupted in Detroit, Watts, Newark and Harlem because white America had too long ignored the cries of black America. Whites fled inner cities for the safety of the suburbs. The decade of the 60’s was terrifying and bloody. We buried two Kennedy’s, Martin and Malcolm, and our collective dreams. 

Richard Nixon was in the White House when the 70’s came along, and he made law and order the rage along with stoking the racial fears of southern voters.  Kent State happened on Nixon’s watch, unarmed students gunned down by National Guard troops, like a scene lifted from Argentina or Chile. Nixon eventually resigned in disgrace to be replaced by Gerald Ford. Saigon fell, the economy was ravaged by inflation, and the nation seemed to lose its mojo and its swagger. Our confidence wasn’t restored by Jimmy Carter’s single term, though Carter was a decent and, for the most part, honorable man. The overthrow of our man in Iran, the Shah, and the hostage crisis that followed made it clear that our power was limited. At the same time the Japanese appeared poised to dislodge us from our place at the head of the economic table. We began to hear about the Rust Belt.

Then Ronnie Reagan reappeared on the national political stage, with promises to restore America to her rightful place on top of the world. With a prepared script and his actor’s background, Ronnie was a formidable political force, playing the role of president as John Wayne might -- standing tall and talking tough, believing always in the essential goodness of the American people. According to Reagan, government was the problem, and if government would just step out of the way, the energy and productivity and moxie of the American people would flow like the Nile, all the way to prosperity for all.

A big fan of the economist Milton Friedman, Ronnie extolled, in his avuncular and winning way, the virtues of the free market. Forget John Maynard Keynes. Reduce the role of government in the economy, unfetter capital from costly and redundant regulation, and let the just, wise and infallible Market God deliver the bounty. The Reagan era changed the norms of the game, the language of debate, and ignited a war on organized labor, government oversight of business, anti-trust laws, and welfare queens. The market knew best how to reward the producers, the risk takers, and the entrepreneurs, those heroes of commerce who were the only people that mattered.

I was a callow young man back then, and a lot of what Reagan said made sense to me. Fortunately, with the help of experience and learning, I would outgrow Reagan’s oversimplifications.