In the Land of the Bubble Dwellers

“We need to recover the language of class warfare.” Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, author and revolutionary.

The mainstream media in this country is owned and operated by corporate America for corporate America, so it’s no surprise that the airwaves are loaded with misinformation, propaganda and flat out lies. On CBS Sunday Morning last week there was a segment about Ben Bernanke, who headed up the Federal Reserve from 2006 until 2014, that was so misleading it practically rocketed off the bullshit meter.

According to Bernanke’s telling, the Wall Street bailout of 2008 was absolutely necessary to save the US and world economy from total disaster, and the virtue of the decision by the Bush Administration, and after that Tim Geithner and the Obama people, to bail out the banks has led to the recovery we find ourselves enjoying in 2015.

I don’t suppose Bernanke ever bothered to read Neil Barofsky’s book Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, because if he had he wouldn’t be trying to re-write history and the role he and the Fed played in it. Bernanke made the ludicrous, not to mention false, statement that no one in Washington saw the mortgage crisis coming. I suppose one had to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve to be that blind and stupid. Look, Ben, you lying pinhead, plenty of people outside the DC bubble knew what was going on in the housing business, and as it turns out, your predecessor, Alan Greenspan, was also very well aware that the fundamentals of the housing market were totally fucked up.

Let’s be very clear about the bailout – it didn’t have anything to do with helping ordinary people who had lost or were in the process of losing their homes. Here’s what Barofsky, who was appointed to the post of Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, had to say:

“…to what I saw as a hijacking of both the bailouts and the government itself by a handful of Wall Street financial institutions and their executives. I saw how they were able to exert their power and influence to protect and reinforce a dangerous status quo that worked brilliantly for them but has left the rest of the country behind.”

The “recovery” has been lovely for corporate America, assorted oligarchs and the wealthy, and a sham for people who work for a living, and Ben Bernanke knows it, even if he’s not willing to stare into his bathroom mirror and admit it. When asked why income inequality has increased since the bailouts, Bernanke doubled down on his mendacity and said it was because too many working people lack the skills to compete in the globalized economy.

That’s one of the prized tropes of the bubble class, pinning the blame for circumstances on the victims of 40 years of official government monetary, tax, trade, and labor policy. I guess Bernanke has forgotten the millions and millions of American jobs that have been exported to China, Mexico, Thailand, Vietnam, Jordan, Bangladesh and Honduras, just to name a few places where labor is dirt cheap and labor and environmental regulations are lax or completely non-existent.

Capitalism depends on exploitation, amorality and greed; it has no governor on its rapacious appetites, and it always contains the seed of its own destruction, even without the complicity of the central government.  Unless it was filled with complete imbeciles, the Federal Reserve knew that American banks were gambling heavy on home mortgages and that those bets would come due with disastrous consequences. The fact is that the Fed, which exists to serve its member banks, turned a blind eye.

And the fact is that Ben Bernanke was Chairman of the Fed when the bubble burst. Now the fucker is spinning a story to protect his reputation, and of course, CBS helps sell his lies.

Carly's Turn in the Spotlight

Republican presidential hopefuls held another gabfest the other night, not far from where I live, down the coast and then inland to Simi Valley and the Reagan Library. Trump and Rubio and Walker and the rest of the nitwits who believe they are of presidential timber love standing in the shadow of Ronnie Reagan, despite the fact that Reagan’s actual accomplishments as president were not remarkable and were, in many respects, criminal.  

Good Morning America, which focuses daily on every deed or utterance by Donald Trump, no matter how mundane or ridiculous, announced the morning after the debate that Carly Fiorina was the “breakout star.” Oh boy, competition for the current poll leader! And from a woman no less! Fiorina will take her turn in the media glare and remain there until the machine tires of her and decides that one of the other candidates has traction and offers a more enticing narrative. By that time Trump may still be around, insulting immigrants, making absurd statements about winning trade deals with Mexico and China, building walls along our southern border, and displaying, with pride, his complete ignorance of what governance is all about.

There is one front on which I have to hand it to the GOP and their paid strategists and that is the ability to find a wedge issue, whether Affirmative Action, abortion, prayer in school, gay marriage, and now Planned Parenthood, that evil, immoral organization that murders fetuses on demand from poor and reproductively irresponsible women. The GOP message is that PP doesn’t deserve public funding, and in order to insure it doesn’t get it, the morally superior GOP will shut the federal government down.

Never mind the facts, never mind all the important services PP provides, focus exclusively on those dead fetuses and defund, defund, defund!

Jumping on the defund PP bandwagon, Carly Fiorina said it was an issue of the nation’s character. Oh my, imagine that, nothing less than our national character. Are the masses clamoring at the doors of Congress to strip funding from Planned Parenthood? Marching in the streets? Holding candlelight vigils outside the White House? Not that I’m aware of. If we’re going to discuss threats to the nation’s character let’s start with illegal wars, indefinite detention and torture of suspected terrorists, mass incarceration of people of color, financial manipulation and fraud by our major banks, the corroding influence of money in our political system, gross income inequality, mass surveillance and collection of our personal communications and other data, and our unwavering support for despotic regimes in the Middle East, including Israel. Start with any of these subjects.

There never was a shining American city on a hill; that was a fantasy, a myth, a tale told the gullible by Ronald Reagan and every GOP president since.

Many Times Worse

“The real power in America is held by a fast-emerging new Oligarchy of pimps and preachers who see no need for Democracy or fairness or even trees, except maybe the ones in their own yards, and they don’t mind admitting it. They worship money and power and death. Their ideal solution to all the nation’s problems would be another 100 Year War.” Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear, 2003

Like most people, I remember where I was and what I was doing on September 11, 2001, the day the world changed and America became a different country. I was dropping my son at kindergarten at Roosevelt Elementary School on Laguna Street, on an absolutely gorgeous day, nothing but clear blue-sky overhead, sunshine, the weather my hometown is renowned for. My daughter was eight days old. Minutes after I deposited my son in his classroom my wife called and told me that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City. I drove home and, like millions of Americans, spent the next few hours glued to the television.

Later that day – and I remember this clearly because I wrote it down – I wondered if what was now being described as a terrorist attack by Islamic extremists would cause the United States to re-think and reconsider its policies in the Middle East.

Stupid me -- stupid, stupid, stupid.

There was, of course, no reflection whatsoever; the US was the victim of a horrific act of terror and would react in kind, anywhere in the world it deemed necessary. The language coming from the mouth of our illegitimate president was retributive. The world’s preeminent military power, the world’s sole superpower, was about to unleash the Global War on Terror. Our righteousness was just and justified. We would bring the evildoers to justice, chase them through the badlands, smoke them out and bring them down, dead or alive. The gloves were coming off. We would fight terror with terror and damn the consequences.

Little was made at the time of the national origin of the hijackers, Saudis nearly to a man, our close and dear friends and masters of one of the Middle East’s divine oil patches. Osama bin Laden, himself a Saudi, was our man, our new archenemy, and bin Laden was somewhere in Afghanistan, directing jihad against America with a satellite phone and a network of devoted, bloodthirsty acolytes. Our political leaders told us that bin Laden’s people were everywhere and called us to vigilance and faith in the American Way. W. Bush and Uncle Dick Cheney said we were attacked because the terrorists hated our freedom. The narrative lines were cast, fixed on by media mouthpieces and propagandists and politicians, and in very short order the horror of the terrorist attack was flipped on its head and became a once-in-a-century opportunity to redefine the world. Every neocon fantasy cooked up in think tanks during the preceding decade was pulled out and dusted off and shined up and carried into the public realm by Uncle Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and Condi Rice.

The US invaded Afghanistan, quickly vanquished the Taliban (though the Taliban would just as quickly recover) and cornered, then lost, Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora Mountains. The war was on in earnest now, and on its heels Bush and Co., aided and abetted by pusillanimous Democrats, brought us the Patriot Act and the creepy Department of Homeland Security, extraordinary rendition, “enhanced interrogation techniques,” indefinite detention, and the prison at Guantanamo. International law became something other nations had to obey. America reserved to itself the right to act unilaterally, to ignore borders and airspace.

Without much debate America adopted a permanent war footing, much of it outsourced to private contractors who made big profits with limited accountability. The brave men and women of the US military could do no wrong, and every man or woman in uniform was a hero, endlessly feted by the political class.

I remember when W. Bush made his case for the invasion of Iraq. It made no sense to me whatsoever, the premise and reasoning sounded like bullshit, and judging by the number of people who marched in the streets in cities around the world, most citizens agreed. W. Bush flipped the world the middle finger and ordered the invasion. It would become an unmitigated disaster for the people of Iraq, for the US, and for the region. Within a decade the US would be involved in armed conflicts in Libya, Yemen, and Syria. The thousands of refugees streaming into Europe from the Middle East today are a consequence of our meddling.

9/11 was a hideous crime. The response of the US to that crime made it many times worse.

Belly Up to the Genius Bar

I dropped my iPhone and shattered the display, not bad enough to put the phone out of commission, but enough to be annoying. My wife told me the display could be replaced at the Apple store on State Street, a suggestion I resisted at first because the thought of a visit to the Apple Store was sure to be annoying. Now, don’t get me wrong – Apple designs fine products of which I own three: iPhone, iPad, and Macbook Air. What annoys me about the Apple Store is that it reminds me of a cult. Young kids in black t-shirts or polos, Apple logo stitched above their hearts, running around, iPads at the ready, helping hapless middle-aged folks navigate their iPhone 6’s. There is an attitude of superiority among the denizens of Apple that I find off-putting. I have similar feelings about the hucksters who work in the Verizon Wireless store, a place I never exit without feeling like I have been violated.

I walked in and was set upon in less than ten seconds by a young lady who offered to lead me to the “genius bar” for assistance. I stood in line until another young kid, this one using an iPad to record information, asked me what sort of help I needed. I showed him my phone, the spidery cracks in the display. I asked him if it was repairable and he assured me it was. Then he took my vital information – name, phone number, e-mail address – tapping the data into the iPad, and told me to return in an hour and twenty minutes. He informed me that I would be receiving three text messages in the next hour or so.

I walked back home, past the County Courthouse where a wedding was taking place, bride and groom poised to take the grand plunge.

As promised, I received three text messages, the last of which summoned me back to the Apple Store. Once again I was escorted to a line where the same kid was checking customers in. He directed me to sit at a square table in front the genius bar where someone would assist me in just a few minutes. I sat on a black stool with my damaged iPhone on the table in front of me. Employees buzzed around, disappearing through a door behind the genius bar, then reappearing; nobody made eye contact with me. An ad for the iWatch played on a screen. Bored after five minutes of waiting, I got up to browse some accessories on the wall, leaving my phone on the table. I wasn’t away from the table more than 60 seconds, but when I turned from the wall my phone was nowhere to be seen. A security guard had swept it up and was walking away with it. “Hey man,” I said, “whoa now, can I have my phone back?” The security guard handed it over without a word.

I went back to sit at the table. Another ten minutes passed. Finally a young man came over and shook my hand and said he would be helping me. “Cracked display, right?” I nodded. “Well, let’s see if we can do something about it,” he said. He asked me to pull the protective case off. When I did he said, “Oh, yeah, this is a 4S, the display can’t be replaced.”

“Why didn’t someone tell me that when I walked in here an hour and a half ago?” I asked.

“I dunno, sorry.”

“Me too,” I said.

I slipped my cracked phone back into its case and left the store, muttering to myself about the overuse of the word “genius.”

The irony of this tale is that the day after I dropped my phone, my wife dropped hers and cracked the display…