Biosphere, women, children, poor and innocent to suffer a majority of the consequences
Haven't checked in lately, but boy howdy there sure is a lot going on. Woke up the other day to realize that the nihilists really truly are at the controls. Oh, sure they have some weird marketing ploy or half-assed alibi to justify the indulgence of absolutely every thoughtless conceited impulse they (the nihilists) happen to have: i.e. "Everything is ethical if it is done at GOD’s mysterious prompting.” Or the mirror image of this Abrahamic nonsense: "It's ok to do whatever you want in the interest of winning." Corollary: "If the rules get in your way; change them to suit your purpose."
I have to quote Rich here because he nailed it so concisely:
"Anyway, today Lehman Bros. went tits up, and various economists are advising cautious optimism, trust the smart men who are running the show, and try not to be bitter about the deregulation of the banking and mortgage system that brought all this about. That particular 1999 travesty overturned the strongest piece of Depression-era protection (the Glass-Steagel act) we had left, and no matter how many people at the time cried foul, it was a fait accompli."
Check in to this, read up, it’s important. Just as soon as the last of the depression era voters were dying or slipping into dementia, wealthy idiots simply changed the rules back to the way they were before the last disaster. They bought senators and changed the rules, the Grandsons of those we bailed out back in the depression and many times before put everything back in place just like it was before. More from Rich.
"Ever since the wall between banking and mortgage came down, the industry felt they could take increasingly crazy risks, and promise even more stupid things to their customers, who had been told that basically, you can use your house as an ATM. And Wall Street piled on the dirt. We were so busy artificially driving up the stock prices of often non-existent and certainly non-proven web-based businesses that it was bound to fall apart, as boom markets always do. Speculation Destroys Markets, as I always have said, although like guns n' cancer, it's not like it's a new thing, and will probably be with us always."
Important thing to remember is that this wasn't just irresponsible consumers unwisely taking on too much debt, becoming over extended and getting foreclosed on. That we could handle, it was the speculating that did the damage. I remember reading about a thing called CFO's or "opaque packages." Masses of bad paper so complex it takes mathematicians weeks to even estimate their value. This is a means of detaching the value of the debt from the price paid for it. For example, my own debts have changed hands five times in the last 7 or so years. Each time that happened they were sold for more money. In many cases these debt packages are actually being sold for more than the amount of the loans they represent. Rich again:
"Say it again: Speculation Destroys Markets... You start artificially inflating prices, there will be a fall. Especially since those doing the inflating were not actually concerned with the long-term well being of the market and its clientele; they were only concerned with profit, and that poisons things. I don't mean that in any holistic sense, either. I literally mean that you grow economies to grow and sustain communities; not profit is bad.
So we're at a place again where people's 401k's are disappearing, pension funds dismantled, people defaulting on house and car loans, and the market keeps talking cheery bullshit. The big lending houses (and pretty soon, insurance companies) are getting bailed out, the Chinese own all of our debt that isn't owned by India or Saudi Arabia...And why the fuck is the Stock Market even legal? To put it shortly, there's a boom and bust cycle at work in every market, and their whole job seems to be to make people forget that little fact. If you or me had so routinely driven the U.S. economy in the ditch, we'd be in prison right now, and rightfully so."
That is: profits and markets are only good if they serve some clear well defined end, not an ideological glorification of self-interest (however, 'enlightened' said self interest may be.)
Ideology killed millions and millions of people in the 20th century and near as anyone can tell, none of it did us much good. I suggest that he reason for this is that ideologies don't have clear concrete goals, only abstract 'values' to be implemented regardless of the human cost. "Everything will be good and right and true once", oh, let’s say, "the proletariat owns the means of production," to take one famous example. The problem here is that no one had any clear idea what good and right and true might actually look like, but it is assumed we will all know once the great sky-pie is manifested. Remember now, it doesn’t matter which sky-pie it is, National Socialism, evangelical christianity, racial purity, Maoism, Alaskan Separatism or any other nationalist bullshit, it’s the same logic in all cases: once people get high on ideology they tend not to consider horrific results a problem as long as it is the fruit of correct ideology. The weird neo-conservative anti-government libertarianism (anarcho-capitalism is another fine word for it) that is killing us currently is much the same thing and could well yield the biggest humanitarian disaster yet if we don’t wake up soon. Problems arise when people lose track of the point of the exercise and start thinking about the 'end of days' or the 'golden future' or some such messianic or milennial fantasy. Let me hum a few bars of this one for you:
All will be well once we pare down government to the minimum. In addition to making us manly again, this will confer on us true freedom ( in some apparently metaphysical form) to be what ever kind of loner cowboy we want to be, packin' whatever kind of tactical rocket launcher we prefer.
You see, son, whatever comes to be once we get rid of all of these, effeminate government regulations, soft headed environmental concerns and oppressive taxes, will be by definition good. I don't know what that will look like, mind you, but you just gotta have faith (read: belief without evidence) because it will be really really great! Everything you see around you right now. All that is wrong. So lock and load. That's all got to go if we are to usher in the new dispensation
This is killing us. I'm not exaggerating.
We can't afford another major ideological struggle. If we want our markets and profits to do something for us we have to specify some simple humble little goals. It isn't as exciting as working toward some grand metaphysical manifestation, but hey, you can do that on your own time. As for the public agenda lets keep it to simple stuff like balanced budgets and stable economic cycles everyone can participate in. Let's minimize the desperation and suffering, say (it's not just a bleeding heart compassion thing either, desperate people are very very expensive) provide education, build a nation with bridges that don't collapse and an interstate system to truck those goods around. And, hey, since we pride ourselves on ingenuity, how's about we get us some technologies that make this program sustainable, healthy and whatnot. I guarantee you such technologies will be very profitable. Build it and they will come. Come? Pal o' mine, they're already lined up down the street.
Somehow we have chosen not to do these things in the name of 'freedom.' Will somebody please tell me what this kind of freedom this is, because I am baffled? Define the word freedom for me, give me something... anything. I don't think that word means what these guys think it means.
But, it looks like we are a little too far down this chute to get out now. I hope this barrel is sturdy because we're going over the edge of Niagara fucking Falls.
These items too:
Looks like some evil fuck in China put a chemical very similar to cyanide in huge quantities of the powdered milk supply. Several babies are dying and it looks like some of that milk may have found its way into chocolate and cookies made in Europe. Bravo! Why was this chemical put in the milk? I'm glad you asked: to artificially increase the protein count in nutritional tests. See, desperation is expensive. And excessive centralization of food production is suicidal. This powdered milk is in countless products all over the world by now...
Finally, David Foster Wallace died. He killed himself. Part of the reason I didn't post for so long is that I wanted to post something about it, but I didn't know what to say. It saddened me in a way the death of a public figure never has. I was and am surprised by my reaction; I didn't think he mattered that much to me. I found myself actually feeling his absence. I didn't feel this way even when Ken Kesey died.
I'm not sure I understand it and all of the usual 'voice of a generation' 'too brilliant for this sorry world of ours' bullshit is so wrong it makes me want to scream. That may have actually been part of what made it hurt. He wasn't Curt fucking Cobain or Keith goddamn Moon, or some shit, he was the opposite of that, at least for me. DFW was a bit of oxygen let into the stifling atmosphere of over romanticized self-absorbed cynical outsider bullshit your Cobains and Moons and Sid Vicious's and Janis Joplin's represent. A variety of bullshit that entranced too many of us for too long while the christian right, neo-conservatives, Lakud party operatives, young republicans, Scoop Jackson Democrats, innovative financiers and AM radio talk show blatherers were getting organized.
Look, I have nothing against the Cobain and Joplin end of the spectrum fundamentally, they are great as such, important even, and they did mean something to me. I don’t mean to take them to task in and of themselves, that's not the point. But for so many people it was too easy to use that detached disillusioned turn-on and drop out rhetoric to just stop trying. And I also think many people didn’t fully appreciate the degree to which the choice to even go that route is a luxury.
However, on the other hand we can't forget that part of the reason this outsider thing was and is so attractive is that it does provide an option that doesn't require you to switch your brain off, slap a smile on your face and live with the rich putrescent smell of some institutional bullshit (that is: lie to yourself for money.) DFW was still trying but he didn't sacrifice his honesty and clarity. It's the tough path, the path with no path, and it took real ingenuity but he managed.
We are lost right now, culturally, socially, spiritually, economically, morally... you name it. We are lost deep in some wilderness, and we need to realize that no one, no savior, no ideological program, no religion and no leader is coming help us, *we are* the rescue squad. We get ourselves out, or we don't get out. This is not the time to panic.
Regardless of whether of not I’ve communicated any of this right, this much I still have to affirm: Don’t count the sane people out yet, and despair isn’t an option.
DFW's dead and I hate it. That's that. It's a gap that needs to be filled and there are already so many gaps. Part of this is anger. I'm sure he suffered. I can never know what he suffered. I know it isn't necessarily charitable or right to feel this way, but I wish he'd figured out how to hang on. He had no goddamn business killing himself.
Look, I don't know if I've said this at all right, but there it is.
Harpers magazine has been generous enough to make all of DFW's articles available as free PDF'sThe best of them (in my opinion) is an essay called "Shipping Out" later renamed "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again." If you read this on your computer avoid drinking anything, as you will likely spew it all over your screen in spasmodic irrepressible laughing.
Finally: I have had to edit this post countless times in the last two days for various reasons technical and otherwise but I think I have finally got the final form. I usually wait a day or two to post, and I remember now why I do that.
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