Did you know that Lehman Brothers, the original firm, had survived the American Civil War, both World Wars, and the Great Depression? I did not realize it was that old. But in 2008 this investment bank seemingly collapsed almost overnight.
As I watched the camera pan the sea of privileged white faces at the Republican National Convention a few weeks back, I recalled reading many years before a remark by an historian, who said that the Eighteenth Amendment establishing Prohibition in 1919 was the “last dying gasp” of Yankee Protestantism.
I wonder if organized crime is appreciative of what “Yankee moralizing” did for the less fortunate eighty-nine years ago. As I now stared at the Republican gathering in 2008, I again wondered if I might not be witnessing the last dying gasp of something else, something equally as bad.
The problem often is however that the death throes of a bankrupt ideology can sometimes linger far too long and leave carnage in its wake. A clueless old reactionary like John McCain and a running mate that is some sort of Alaskan shape-shifting Elmer Gantry are pretty much the end result of something that has simply lingered beyond the discard date.
Yes we need to dismantle welfare-capitalism and the corporate state that Mussolini thought up nearly a century ago. We need universal health care in America. Of course, private health insurance companies can certainly offer coverage for erectile-dysfunction medication and cosmetic surgery.
We need an Apollo program for climate change and a twenty-first century energy plan. We need national education standards. We need to improve and strengthen international organizations. We also need to avoid going completely bankrupt if we Americans expect to accomplish any of these things and much more.
There is of course another lingering monster in America that has been with us far too long. White racism will play its part, it seems to me, in this election. No one knows its depth, although I suspect it’s still very deep.
The anecdotal evidence as they say is available. It’s ever so easy to always blame the poor and the uneducated, but racism is also found inside the nice house in the affluent community with the Mercedes parked in the driveway.
And, of course, there are the religious fundamentalists in America. How many will choose stewardship and social justice rather than gay bashing and the Apocalypse?
This election is going to tell us a lot about whom we are and whether or not we wish to linger in the 20th century any longer. The rest of the world will move ahead regardless.
For a good summary of America’s financial magic kingdom and the global economy, go to Lehman and the end of the era of leverage. Read especially the last two paragraphs.
For anyone interested in what could happen to the value of the dollar because of the increasing liabilities of the American government go to Last Gasp of a Doomed Currency.
All of this ain’t lipstick on a pig. We can only hope that enough Americans realize they’re not living in some stupid TV reality show and that critical thinking may have some merit in their lives.
