President Obama may or may not be a lame-duck after the 2010 Midterm elections and be swept from office in 2012, but such prognostications are really a waste of time because greater forces will dictate what happens to the U.S. both politically and economically. The reasons behind his moving so fast on so many fronts may be that he senses the ephemeral nature of political power in a deeply divided country with many uneducated and intransigent voters still in complete denial of our serious global economic, social, political and military decline. He is making a one-time last-ditch effort towards changing the trajectory of American History that started in the 1980’s and ended in the massive economic debacle of 2008 that is still in full force today.
A solid majority of angry white men over 45 and bitter white women over 65 did not vote for Obama in 2008. However demographics of the country are changing rapidly, and other age and racial groups determined the 2008 election because they bothered to vote in greater numbers than normally expected. No matter what the issue or proposal, these aging whites are never going to support him due to various economic, racial, social, religious and political reasons.
The fear of imaginary “death squads” is real for people who know they oppose the majority of Americans who are younger and non-white. The only way to reduce their voting influence for the next 20 years is simply to outlive them, but they fear that process may be sped up artificially so they made up those “death squads” and went back to waving their guns. They are not going to the great beyond without an ugly fight to preserve a country that no longer exists in their minds or that ever existed in reality.
This deep recession has gutted jobs for white men of all ages, regardless of their economic or social backgrounds. Being permanently unemployed, or fearing such a state, does not make for a lot of happy campers ready to sing “Kumbaya.” However, this ugly trajectory started 2 decades ago by corporate America outsourcing overseas many of the jobs white men used to work, and our economy and political class are not really interested in encouraging the creation of good-paying alternative jobs. If one looks at current unemployment numbers for blacks, Hispanics and the young, the figures are even more shocking and depressing. That doesn’t matter to angry white men who are focused on themselves and their former complete control over the country. Many whites also forget that the vast majority of the wealthiest Americans, including top business owners and executives, are also white men over 45, but that is not about to change with ever-expanding income stratification in the U.S.
Barak Obama is really the accidental President, because the economic crash occurred during the summer of 2008 just BEFORE a national election. The Great Depression of the 1930’s started in 1929, just AFTER the 1928 election of Republican Herbert Hoover, who had long 3 more years to let the U.S. sink into a deep depression by doing nothing or what little he did was viewed by history, Keynesians and some Monetarists as completely wrong. The Hoover Administration fortunately discredited Republicans and most of their policies for more than 30 years. But they resumed power when the majority of American voters never lived through the depression came to power in the 1980’s and held it until 2008.
Americans in the 1930’s did not have a 24/7 news/entertainment cycle with multiple available media providing every wing-nut with a national forum. Americans only had telephones and AM radios, much greater patience, and far fewer expectations for immediate gratification. The Administration of Franklin Roosevelt finally took office in 1933 at the true bottom of the depression and the President spent much time explaining his proposed changes to a fearful and uneducated population. It helped that he was not black or mixed-race either. For too many angry white men in 2009, there still resides an underlying bigotry against blacks, Hispanics, Asians and everyone else. They will even ignorantly support policies damaging to themselves simply to spite and hurt those they detest – a sort of consuming and destructive self-loafing.
Thus Obama today is where Hoover was then, only with an intelligent cast of supporting characters who better understand what to do with the economy from overall monetary and fiscal bases. The financial bailouts by the Federal Reserve and U.S, Treasury prevented a depression but they have lacked good regulatory follow-up. But many Americans, congenitally ignorant and proud of it, simply do not understand history, economics or politics. They have attention spans and superficiality levels similar to American Idol audience members. And the polarization among the entire electorate has only increased steadily over the past 20 years, not decreased.
The multiple messes Republicans and the Bush Administration left are so great that it will take years for the economy to recover and reset on a new path – and it won’t be easy or it may not even be possible. Serious and unchallenged studies indicate that most of the current Federal Deficit is a result of (1) this deep economic recession, (2) prior huge Bush tax cuts for the Wealthy, and (3) higher spending due to the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Medicare Prescription Drug Program started during the Bush years. New spending in the Stimulus Bill and extending some tax cuts are causing about 25% of the current deficit and likely future deficits. Yet in just 8 months, the Obama Administration is now reaping the entire blame for everything the American people and its Federal government did for the past 20 years.
Imagine how long it may take the private sector to start growing again without any governmental intervention while facing a massive housing value meltdown, a complete disappearance of private bank lending and new private capital, plus increasing job losses and lower consumer spending. Now at this desperate juncture we are going to be penny-wise and pound-foolish by cutting governmental spending? How deep of a depression do we want? And for those who are perpetually against raising taxes in good and bad times alike regardless of the long-term needs of the country, what are your criteria for helping your fellow citizens and our nation as a whole?
For educating the American people, it might have been better that the financial crash occurred in December 2008 after John McCain and Sarah Palin had been elected. Ignorant of history, Americans really need concrete and timely examples of complete failure and that is what a McCain-Palin Administration would have provided. We now have a breather for the utterly incompetent Republican Party by having the Democrats take over before responsibility was allocated. Even assuming a Congress in Democratic hands, a President McCain would have enacted no stimulus bill except for a few more tax cuts and reduced government spending, and the auto and banking industries would have been left to fend for themselves. These industries are fully culpable for the mess and they contain many hopelessly greedy characters that will abuse an unregulated environment. However the fallout from doing nothing on the overall economy would have sent the U.S. into a full-blown depression, something we might have collectively deserved. But unfortunately most people do not realize the important and unheralded efforts that have been and are still being made in 2009 to stabilize the economy. It’s messy and imperfect because we’re only human. Instead most will continue to blame President Obama for a lackluster recovery and the inherited mess from Republicans.
Under McCain-Palin there would have been no new healthcare reform proposals. The only national healthcare issue would be worrying about the health of a quickly aging and ever angry President McCain, and the worldwide fear that the utterly clueless and ignorant Mrs. Palin might actually take office. That would have sent shudders in all global stock markets, plunged the dollar down to new lows, and raised interest rates to new highs. All of which would have assured us an even deeper depression than that of the 1930’s but at least it would impose complete ownership of this economic debacle to the Republicans.
The Republicans have actually escaped most responsibility for their serious errors over the past 2 decades, and may resume power merely because the Democrats and President Obama cannot dig us out of the hole they made fast enough. It also helps that the many angry white wing-nuts vote in greater numbers during mid-term elections than do other voters with no imaginary axes to grind. We have President Obama and the Democratic Party playing the roles of Hoover and the Republicans at the start of the 1930’s – and we all know that politically did not end well. Of course, this period of 2009 to 2013 may be just an interlude to a later deluge.
If Republicans regain Congress and the White House, their policies will ensure a new and permanent depression thereafter. And such explaining to the American people will simply fall on deaf and ignorant ears. They simply have to live through it to understand it. Republicans have learned nothing from the last two national electoral defeats and their supporters actually think their policies of the past 30 years, and particularly the last 8, were not to blame for anything. Unfortunately, we cannot live in two alternative universes simultaneously to see the widely-varying consequences.
Americans get the government we deserve. We were for 2 centuries a very lucky country to have enough intelligent people to overcome the mediocrity or absolute ignorance of a plurality of our citizens, particularly with a policy of welcoming immigrants from around the world. We had the built-up wealth, natural resources, balanced and efficient political and economic systems, effective patent, copyright and intellectual property protections and financial incentives for innovation, and unchallenged military superiority to reign as the world’s great Empire since 1945. Our ascendancy actually began in the early 1900’s and World War I as Britain was quickly receding as a world Empire. The world of even 10 or 20 years ago does not exist and we have made no provisions on how to adjust to the new realities. Most depressing, we may not have the political ability and national intelligence to correct things.
If our political system cannot promptly come up with some reasonable and significant healthcare reforms, banking and financial changes, address global energy and environmental challenges, rebuild our transportation infrastructures, create new jobs in emerging technologies to meet global demands, and be willing to actually pay for them through higher taxes, we are simply doomed to follow in the footsteps of the prior great world empires of Rome, Spain and Britain. And the fall will be much faster and greater, with much more pain and dislocation for all Americans.
In 2009, our country is foolishly fighting over utter nonsense in a delusional mixed state of fantasy and denial. In particular many angry white men over 45 are exposing themselves to be utterly bigoted, bitter, ignorant, and nihilistic. They might be better secluded in the echo chamber sanitarium of the Old Confederacy where they could set up a separate nation so the rest of us can address the real national issues of the 21st Century. It may make great 24/7 Media entertainment for ourselves in the short term but our current and future global competitors are busy rebuilding their economies from this recession and positioning themselves to utterly render our country politically and economically superfluous by 2020.
We will likely re-embrace the discredited Republican policies in 2010 and 2012 in order to ensure our nation’s self-destruction. No prior world empire was able to escape the historical trajectory of its obvious decline. Meaningful change is very difficult and our country has not recognized that the world has changed and we have been left behind. America in its current political and economic configuration is destined for failure if we maintain the same trajectory.
Objective criticism and pessimism are denigrated as anti-American attitudes. We claim to be forever the optimistic society looking towards the future. That’s fine fodder for simpletons but “the sun will come out tomorrow” attitude is completely delusional and unrealistic for the 21st Century. We really need to grow up fast but it is obvious that we can’t — a historical signature for the decline of all prior great powers.
There is no such thing as a “this is different” distinction. We are imperfect humans and we repeat the same mistakes of our forbearers because we often don’t bother learning from history — unless we actually live through multiple hammer hits on our heads and multiple swift kicks in our butts. However, a nice glass of wine and the company of good friends and close family members can make the inevitable crash a bit more palatable. C’est la vie.
Submitted on 8/17/09 by Marc Pascal in Phoenix, AZ