The Age of Incompetence: Part VI

smith One of the things that seeps into the far recesses of the mind the more one studies the economic scandal that has swept over the country is trying to separate the issues and at the same time the good guys from the bad guys. In 1999, for example, there was a critical point when the Glass-Steagall Act was gutted in the Senate and the vote was 90-8. You might expect such Democratic names as Biden, Kerry, Daschle, Dubrin and Edwards would be among the eight who stood steadfast, but you would be wrong; they were among the 90 who rolled over. Profiles in courage has been AWOL in the U.S. Senate for decades.

You might think this economic scandal would have brought some senators out of their ideological fog and start thinking of the welfare of the country, but you would be wrong. A small item in a newspaper on April 6 revealed that the Senate had a vote in favor of requiring the Federal Reserve to reveal the names of banks and other institutions it has lent money to. It passed 59-39 in a non-binding vote, but one wonders who are those 39 who voted for secrecy?

You might assume that at a time when 22,500 Americans are losing their jobs every day and 4,582 Americans are having their homes foreclosed every day that the Senate could let those who have estates valued at $9 million leave their taxes alone. But no, every Republican plus 10 Democratic senators voted 51-49 to lift the estate tax exemption to $10 million. It would be interesting to see which senators received "campaign donations" on this one.

The point is that money has so corrupted the U.S. system of government that those guilty of bringing our country to the brink of ruin cannot be identified by party label. Yes Republicans have lead the charge to ruin because they practiced voodoo economics long after it was exposed as voodoo. But like the invasion of Iraq, it took the help of sold out Democrats to make it happen.

And what about Presdent Obama? How long, one wonders, can he play the good cop bad cop charade by pretending he doesn't know what some of his underlings like Tim Geithner are doing, as in the AIG bonus scandal when Obama had to fake outrage that he really didn't know, when in fact he really did know. This slick Willie routine has its limits. Or does it?

What history reveals about the American public is that a surprising number of them are under what I can only call the placebo effect. That is no matter how obvious the lie there is from 30% to 50% of the people willing to suspend reality in order to continue believing in the lie of their choice.

For example, go back to September 2003 when the who dunnit about the Valorie Plame hatchet job was in full bloom. George Bush professed in O.J. Simpson style to know nothing about it and called upon anyone who did know anything about it to come forward. All the while he was withholding information about the fact he had ordered Cheney to give secrets about Nigerian uranium or lack of to reporters to submarine Joe Wilson's whistle blowing. Then the pathetic disclaimer that he would fire anyone involved.

It had the same pathetic overtones of Dick Nixon's "I am not a crook," speech. Yet poll after poll showed a substantial percentage of Americans actually believed or supported Bush. Go figure.

Now we see Americans supporting Obama in much the same fashion as some supported Bush: ignoring the realities at hand in favor of the placebo effect.

Once again trying to separate the issues from the good guys and bad guys taxes one to the limit. Reading some letters to the editor of one national publication I found one blog that caused me to pause. The anonymous writer wrote about the current scandal, "It's not that Obama is intrinsically evil, it's that the system is patently corrupted and a sham and if he didn't do exactly what AIPAC, the banks, the insurance industry and the military industrial complex told him he would meet the same fate as JFK in a nano-second. The only thing that is going to change any of this is a revolution."

That's about as dark as it gets. That comment by the way came to Bill Moyers and Michael Winship who team up on Moyers PBS show. But I have read other letters from Americans who believe exactly what that anonymous writer believes.

They come from people who after eight years of watching Bush-Cheney-Gonzales make naked end runs around the Constitution and the feeble half-hearted attempts of Democrats to resist it, Americans or a good chunk of them are alienated down to their roots. I suspect a good many of them supported Obama because as a practical matter he was the only hope for change, even though deep down most were skeptical at best there would be the meaningful change that would touch their lives.

Now watching Larry Summers, Tim Geitner, and the Machiavellian Ben Bernanke print money and distribute it secretly to their cronies on Wall Street, their worst fears have been confirmed: talk of change was a sham. And now maybe the only thing to save our country is a revolution.

In fact at a March 27 White House meeting with some of the nation's elite bankers Obama is reputed to have told them, "Be careful how you make statements gentlemen. The public isn't buying that. My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks."

So Obama fronts for the establishment and is the placebo effect that keeps the peasants and their pitchforks at bay. So much for change.

It reminds me of the 1939 classic film with the late Jimmy Steward playing the naïve Senator Smith who discovers corruption in a fellow senator (Claude Rains) who he has admired since he was a boy. His discovery goads him to revolt in a dramatic Senate filibuster because as he once unwittingly told the corrupt senator, "The only causes worth fighting for are the lost causes."

It seems to me we are all there now. The corruption is so wide spread and so long standing that we as a nation have finally arrived at a point of no return. It might not take a revolution to save us but it will certainly take revolutionary changes in the whole federal structure.

There can be no compromise about that. For if there is anything less than revolutionary changes what's left won't be worth saving. In fact, another thought has bedeviled me for years now after each earth shaking Washington scandal: instead of too big to fail, perhaps the reality is that we have become too big to save.

In that sense Sen. Jefferson Smith was right,"The only causes worth fighting for are lost causes." For if the U.S. Government as it now stands is not a lost cause, then they do not exist.