I’ll Wait For You

[Daveparts]

I’ll Wait For You
By David Glenn Cox
http://theservantsofpilate.com



Years ago I was in a terrible car crash. It was a beautiful, sunny spring day and we were headed for Panama City, Florida. My friend had just replaced his four thousand-pound Ford with a new MGB convertible. The back tire, the driving wheel, got into the gravel and lost traction. The car swerved and he jerked the wheel to correct, but it wasn’t a four thousand-pound Ford, just an eighteen hundred-pound sports car. All of my life compressed into one instant of stopped and frozen time and a realization that even today haunts my nights. One fleeting thought passed through my mind, not with fear, for it was far too quick for fear to catch hold of its coattails. My thought was, “We’re not going to get out of this.”

I have watched with lively interest as the media has described our economic crisis as the sub prime mortgage mess. Back then the theory was decoupling, all the while denying that we were in a recession. The unemployment numbers grew and economic statistics declined as our former President described the millions losing their homes as “poor consumers.” The President began a program, arm in arm with the lenders, the same lenders that made the bad loans in the first place. And what did he offer to the borrowers? The same package that he offered New Orleans in the days after Katrina.

I admit openly to being cynical, but why shouldn’t I be? I’ve seen my industry devastated with the associated plant closings and suicides. I started two businesses myself; isn’t that what they told us we should try to do? I’ve shuttered them both and because of that when I see a vacant storefront I don’t just see an empty building, I see a devastated dream. The dream of people who tried to do better for themselves, who took out loans and sold off property on a gamble. People hounded night and day by bill collectors while the banks that gave them loans are bailed out.

But it occurred to me, as they were discussing limiting executive compensation, I thought to myself, "Wait a damn minute here! If they’re going to take federal money then we need to send those executives to Urine University for a whiz quiz." After all, everyone from high school athletes to tens of millions of Americans merely seeking employment are forced to submit to a urine test for drug screening. It is a search without probable cause, and it’s not the test I mind but the idea of the test. But these executives have failed; they have crashed their industry, and if we whiz quiz bus drivers, involved in fender benders, why not the banking executives?

No private physicians, no you go to the doc in the box just like everyone else and have the orderly stand next to you while you pee. I mention this because it illustrates the two-tiered system. Banks get bailed out, bankers get bailed out, insurance companies get bailed out. But when the issue is brought to the fore to rescue workers or the big three, immediately the issue becomes over-paid union auto workers and Americans that will just have to settle for less. Well, I’ve got two words for them, Fuck You!

I hope that won’t be edited because as Mark Twain once said, “Sometimes profanity offers a release denied even to prayer.” It is this heads I win, tails you lose society that I have just have grown sick of. This blizzard of propaganda until we can’t see the forest for the trees. The national network media operates as a private club, offering unquestioned opinion against the stimulus package. Google FDR’s New Deal and you’ll see opinion article after article defaming the New Deal and Roosevelt as prolonging the depression and making it worse, but what you won’t find is any viable alternative.

The sufferings of the man on the street are ignored, but zoo XYZ just got a new panda cub! The thousands lined up at a food pantry in Detroit, that’s not news in America; if you want to read about that, try Europe. Just this morning I heard it described again as a crisis of confidence. The Pollyanna /Phil Graham notion that if we think it is all right then it is all right school of economics. As the debate continues about the dangers of government intervention interfering with the free market, I scream, "Don’t you get it? We’re not going to get out of this!”

I supported President Obama’s campaign and I think he is a very intelligent man. But he is a captain without radar picket ships. Does he honestly believe that he’s going to get anywhere by talking sweetly to Republicans? You can’t fight pit bulls with “nice doggie.” The stimulus package is a patch for a flat tire when what we need is a new tire or maybe even a new vehicle.

The thirty-year Republican revolution of Ronald Reagan has cost us our manufacturing base and brought us declining wages for all but the top 20%. It's given us the most expensive health care system in the world, which enriches the corporations at the expense of the poorest among us. Bill Clinton tried to buck the system but found out very quickly that it puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose. Only when he co-operated was he able to pass legislation such as NAFTA and Welfare Reform, and thanks a lot for that.

This revolution of deregulation and redistribution of wealth has brought us to the brink of financial ruin, and “We’re not going to get out of this!” We are not going to negotiate our way out of this or barter our way out of this. This debate going on right now in Congress is telling. It is telling of an impotent system that no longer works in the interests of the people of this country. We have a confederacy of legislators fighting for local corporate interests with no national vision save to exempt the wealthy from tax increases.

We went to war because of 2,752 deaths in the World Trade Center, accompanied by the siren song of media potentates. There are two million American families who have already been thrown out onto the road and there are two million more who will be thrown out onto the road. We’ve spent $594,103,393,531 on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and what are we going to do to assist the American workers and their families? They don’t know yet, they’re still thinking about it. They question if we have enough money in the budget or if it might not hurt long-term growth.

I grow weary of this system, a system where others profit off of my labor or my loss or my illness or my age, and even by my death. We're no different than the cattle in the stockyard, waiting for the herdsman. A system of parasites, we are the United States of Bernie Madoff. If so, what then is our future? This debate is not about the stimulus package; this debate pulls the masks from our antagonists. The real debate will come soon because “We’re not going to get out of this!”

Only a counter-revolution can save us from a status of permanent underclass. This is a revolution, which we cannot lose, either we put the capitalist system back in its box or we do away with the capitalist model altogether. As jobless numbers reach a 26-year high the stock market responds by climbing two hundred points. Somebody sees this as good news. What system could be any worse than living at the capricious whims of the greedy and corrupt? But perhaps you still disagree, and that is fine with me. I’ll wait for you.

[DemReadingDU]

1. “We’re not going to get out of this!”

I'm with you. The system is broken, capitalism is broken, the model is broken. People will wake up when they have no food to eat, no warm place to sleep, and then there will be a revolution.

[Hugin]

2. Ten recommends and no replies!

That's got to be some sort of record.

Yep, the only difference between participating in this economy and being in the traffic accidents I've ever been involved in is that my vision hasn't turned black-and-white.

Everything is still in full stereo high-definition Technicolor(tm)!

Anyone else having that problem? :/

[Hugin]

3. Oh, and a...

:kick:

[nashville_brook]

4. this is probably the best response to our current situation that i've read so far -- and believe me

me when i say, i've ready everything i can get little digits on. thank you for a real, human take on this. you hit the nail on the head by starting out with that car wreck feeling (we're not getting out of this). that is completely the vibe right now.

don't know if anyone else caught this, but Thursday when Keith gave his Cheney special comment, both he and Rachael had a certain resignation in their voices that i had not heard up until this point. it was like the tone horrible acceptance that a cancer patient gets when they come to believe the inevitable is well, inevitable. it startled me in its quietness and lack of bombast.

this essay vibes with that horrible acceptance i heard and says what cannot be said on mainstream television -- that it's going to take a revolutionizing of the way we interact with capital in order to pull out of this. so maybe the new deal naysayers are correct -- maybe that wasn't enough. we have to take it further this time.

thank you DGC.

[The Traveler]

5. Too many still cling

to a Reaganesque whisper of a vague promise of prosperity someday sprinkling down on them from above. Time goes on, and fruit from the bad seed is born, and today we reap a bitter harvest a great many of us saw coming for a long, long time.

And still, they cling to the old ways and hope the high priests of the almighty dollar are right when they say "It is merely a crisis of confidence". Be optimistic, and all your problems will melt away. Uh huh. Chin up, lads.

They won't cling for much longer, methinks, our fellows. The sense is there that they would jump ideological ship for another is someone, anyone, could put together a coherent progressive operating theory. To me, that was the genius of Reagan era conservatism ... not that they came up with a great way of doing things but they put together what I call an "operating theory" ... a system of related ideas and rules that guide how you work. Like when you diagnose a car that won't start. To run, a car has to have fuel/air in the proper ratio, properly timed spark, and compression. So you check those things out. Doing so will lead you to the cause of your problem.

"Supply side economics" was such an operating theory, tailored to deal with the 70s era issues of stagflation. While it can definitely be argued that stagflation was a supply side problem, there is no doubt that today the issue is principally on the demand side. The needs of the suppliers have been well attended over thirty years ... corporations have faired well. But the needs of the demanders, the consumers, have not been well attended. How does one have an expanding consumer based economy when the world has been reduced to a flat earth labor pool?

It seems to mere there is something fundamentally flawed with the operating theory that has dominated American politics and economics for a generation, and we are now getting whacked upside the head with it. But until we have articulated clearly an alternate vision, without apology, without regret, and without compromise ...

How can we blame the average guy out there for waffling when our own Democratic leadership flounders like folk without a clue?

Trav

**edited for typos. Must. Run. Spellchecker. Before. Posting. **

[tomreedtoon]

6. There IS no "man in the street."

He doesn't get on the street. He's too busy watching to see who will be on Dancing with the Stars this season.

Americans need to protest. And by "protest" I mean go downtown to the guy who foreclosed on their homes, go to his office and start shooting. Or at least upend the bastard's desk on top of his unconscious body. But nobody will do it, because Americans are cowards.

And especially among the cowards are the people who will respond to this post, suggesting that they go to that same office with a handful of posies and forgiveness for the bastards who wrecked their lives, instead of some .45 caliber forget-me-nots.

[dgibby]

7. Oh, yes there is, and he's a veteran, and if he's lucky, he sleeps in a cardboard box.

[Two Americas]

10. slight disagreement, if I may

I don't think we should blame the people. I think they are ready to overthrow the tyrants. The obstacle is the activists - the intellectuals, writers, speakers, thinkers and leaders at all levels in the liberal organizations and the party, including a small but very aggressive and dominant faction here.

I don't think there is any way to avoid massive social upheaval now, and I think it will happen soon. Who will be the obstacle, who will oppose that? Who will call for suppressing that? The right wingers, of course, but nothing new or surprising about that. They could be overcome easily. It will be people right here, and there counterparts all throughput liberalism and the "progressive" community, who will be the biggest obstacle.

I can hear it now -

"We need to establish order before we can move forward with our 'progressive' agenda."

"Don't get me wrong, I understand why people are upset, but this is not the right way to go about it."

"Why weren't these people out protesting when we had a Republican administration?"

"Chaos and anarchy is not the answer."

"Violence will accomplish nothing."

"Those people are just criminals and malcontents."


...

[scarletwoman]

11. Don't forget this one: "We need to work from within the Democratic Party."

Liberals are a bigger enemy of revolution than the Right. The Right is clearly recognizable as an enemy. Liberals are more subtle, and hence more dangerous.

sw

[Two Americas]

13. there are two very good things about that

First, the people resisting the Left are a small minority of the activists, which is a small percentage of the people. The tail wags the dog - a few can dominate the entire discussion. We have the numbers, by a very wide margin.

Secondly, it is a battle of words and ideas. That means that it is a battle we could win - we have everything we need to win that battle. We are competing for the attention of the people with the obstructionists and conservatives within the party. They are winning right now, because they identify with those in power and then tell us that our task is hopeless. So we give up, and stop thinking and fighting them, because we think that it is a battle of money, or media access, or havo9ng friends in high places as they do, or power or something.

"The pen is mightier than the sword." The conservatives among us know that, although they will never admit that. They out a tremendous amount of effort into creating confusion so that people cannot hear us, or scaring people so they do not listen to us, or engaging in character assassination to discredit us so that people do not trust us.

[tom_paine]

8. I am an FDR Democrat and don't buy that all capitalism is inherently bad, just crony capitalism

I know, I know - is there any other kind? I say yes and you probably say no, so let's just agree to disagree because we agree on pretty much everything else in your masterful post.

K & R

:toast:

[nashville_brook]

9. lets put capitalism "back in its box"

this is what's been so frustrating to me my whole adult life -- there's not been any serious discussion of putting the reigns on capital(ism) and forcing it to behave and serve people, rather than the other way around.

it's not either/or -- or, at least, it doesn't have to be. as soon as we're being forced into opposite corners, you know we're been manipulated by interests who have no interest in seeing things change.

capital needs to pull its load. capital needs to man-up and start doing the right thing -- and it's up to us to become the masters of capital and quit letting it push us around.

[barbtries]

12. that was

a wonderful piece of writing thank you

[lostnotforgotten]

14. Bombs And Bailouts Are Much Sexier Than Logic And Reason

eom