Anniversary Blues

Well now. I hope you all feel a lot better. The crisis engulfed us five years ago. Since then …

Welcome to the new boss, same as the old boss.

Not much is different except the public is more disaffected than ever. Policy ranges between inept and horrible. And the front pages in the business media are filled with bankers explaining why they can mange their enormous empires despite the losses that pop up every so often. Yes, honestly, Jamie Dimon will get it right this time. Those other times were not his fault. Really. That he takes all the glory in the good times doesn’t mean that he takes the blame in the bad times. Well, he may take the blame but it doesn’t add up to anything. He still has his job. He still owns the board of director’s. The media still adores him. And he’s still very rich.

No, accountability is for little people. Not for the elite.

They mess up, we pay. They do it right, we pay.

Not that they ever worry about things like that.

Sometimes I think our entire elite – business, political, academic, and media – has drifted off into space. So disconnected are they from what ails the economy. So uncaring are they about their bankrupt ideas. So impervious are they to the real world.

They’re doing fine. Don’t worry about them. Bank profits are healthy – up almost 50% from what they were before the crisis. A financial crisis no less. We bailed them out, and they’re just fine. Nobel prize winning economists still lecture no matter how wrong they were. Who cares? They don’t.

As for us?

Confused. Struggling along like usual. Big plans, but less hope they’ll be fulfilled. Spending what we can. Saving not enough. Fed up with politicians. They don’t care do they? Tired of the constant lying to us by big business – I wonder when they’ll get back to reality. Those products aren’t ever what they claim are they? But we buy them – what choice is there?

It would be nice if wages kept up. But they don’t. They haven’t for ages. Do you recall the last time you got a good pay increase? I didn’t think so. Got all those bills paid up easily? I didn’t think so either. Welcome to the 99%.

I read that MacDonald’s decided to help its employees by giving them some advice on how to budget. Someone in HR must have had a bright idea. Probably got a bonus too. The problem is that the advice was absurd. It didn’t have a line item for heat. It turns out it required a wage that MacDonald’s doesn’t pay. So they were saying, in effect, that its employees should quit or get a second job.

That’s how the elite thinks. It doesn’t. It imagines.

It thinks that average people are stuck with nothing because they can’t manage money. It thinks they don’t pay taxes because they’re lazy or they cheat. It thinks average people ought to save more for their own retirement and rely less on the government. It thinks that people need to work more and be happy to earn less in order to be self-sufficient. It thinks that the sick should go to the emergency room rather than have a regular doctor. It thinks that if you don’t have health insurance its because you chose not to – it cannot be because you can’t afford it. Besides you would be able to afford it if only you could budget properly and worked hard enough.

That’s how the elite thinks.

After all we live in America, land of opportunity. If you aren’t well off it’s because you were too lazy to take that opportunity. It can’t be because there was no opportunity.

Can it?

American myth tells us it can’t.

Our fifth year anniversary blues stem from that myth. Our leaders live in a different America where that myth is alive, so they assume it is for everyone. And everyone wants it to be true. So everyone is afraid to speak up, lest the absence of clothes undoes the comfort of the myth.

These days America is exceptional more for its political dysfunction and gun violence than for its ideals. It aged. It ossified. It built a ruling class. It became complacent and allowed its infrastructure to decay, its schools to decline, its politics to become corrupt, its ambition to be reined in, its business to go offshore, its unions to melt away, its middle class to evaporate, and its elite to reap all the rewards. Oh, but it still has a shiny army capable of beating anyone up. Sort of.

Krugman likes to say that the Federal government is a giant insurance company with an army. That’s how it spends it money. The cynic in me says things are the other way around: it is an army with some insurance tacked on. That’s how the military-industrial complex keeps running. Fend off the people with goodies and they’ll support the flag no matter what.

America is deeply militarized nowadays. You cannot go anywhere without homilies to our “heroes”. Ball games stop every so often to honor our troops. Anyone with a uniform is honored no matter how desk bound they are. Our latest mass shooting was at a Navy establishment. Thus the victims are immediately elevated to “hero” status. It no longer matters what they do. Nor what the real heroes do. We no longer distinguish. Bravery is not a requirement for hero status. We lost our focus. We can’t tell the difference. Endless war has devalued what ought to be one of our more cherished values.

Meanwhile Washington has become farce. No one trusts our democratic institutions to do anything useful about anything. They didn’t fix the crisis, why should we expect anything now? Washington gets worked up over things that are remote: war crimes in Syria. Really? How much will that cost us? How many decades of useless involvement will it be? How about worrying about jobs?

No I didn’t think so.

We value the military more than our democracy. Otherwise we’d be up in arms at the corruption. At the voter suppression. At the bias towards business. At the constant flood of wealth going to the elite that says we need to sacrifice. At people like Jamie Dimon who still have power despite the ineptitude he oversees.

No accountability.

And not a word about inequality. About class warfare. About …

A giant crisis and nothing changed.

No wonder the extremists flourish, they’re the only ones with an agenda – however nasty. At least they’re doing something. And action counts. It speaks to passion. To caring. To trying to fix things – however wrong headed. Passion, caring, trying to fix things. Action. All things we no longer expect from Washington.

America is becoming extreme because the people who ought to care, to act, to take responsibility, to lead, and to fix things, aren’t. Palpably. Deliberately. Our elite, business, political, academic, and media are worthless. The elite mooches off the rest while telling the rest that it is the other way around. Orwell would be proud. The elite avoids responsibility while foisting it on the rest. It lacks accountability while lecturing about its importance for everyone else. It talks to itself about its own problems. It has recovered. It is doing well and is frustrated why the rest aren’t happy. So it pontificates about hard work.

As if that was enough nowadays.

Five long years. Nothing changed.

Same as the old boss.