America's Moment of Clarity: 21 Days Clean

It feels strange to me that election day was only three weeks ago. Usually, for me, three weeks is hardly any time at all. I have dishes sitting in my sink that have been there longer than three weeks. I have unopened mail sitting on my table older than three weeks.

But in the case of Obama’s election, November 4th seems like a long time ago. Like months past. Maybe even like something that happened last year.

I don’t know how to explain this warping in my sense of time’s passing.

Maybe it’s because I’m able to breathe again. To relax, knowing that George W. Bush and his gang of crooks, thugs, idiots and con artists are finally getting the boot. And that a smart, competent, sane, decent person has been put in charge again.

It goes even deeper than that, too. I feel like the country I live in remembers what is right and important again. The last eight years have been surreal for me, like I have been put in some sort of Bizarro World version of America, where all our values and priorities had been turned upside down.

Since 2000, I’ve wanted my country back. And now I feel like I have it.

What’s more, it’s even better than when I lost it. Maybe not financially, right now. Or militarily. But psychologically. Emotionally. Dare I even say it? Spiritually.

If America were a person --- a filthy, street-living, meth-addicted person --- I would say that we have hit bottom, had a moment of clarity and are poised to make an even stronger comeback. Because this time we’ve realized that our meth --- all the immediately-gratifying, short-term-thinking, status-quo-preserving shit we’ve been sucking on for decades --- really isn’t good for us. That it might have served us in the past, helping us pull all-nighters on our way up, but has ultimately brought us down to our current bedraggled state.

America Looks Forward to Its Bright Future

Though it took a bad beating to get us here, we might finally be at a point where we seriously consider how we are going to live without getting back on that shit again.

Here’s some of what we’re purging:

1) Racism. Things are different in America now. I saw it in the coalition that Obama put together to work for him. I saw it in the way that America voted. I saw it in the way that the people who didn’t vote for him more or less shrugged and shut up when he won.

I feel that something has truly changed in this country between how it was just 22 days ago. Heavy tectonic plates that have been grinding against one another for decades finally slipped three Tuesdays ago and we’re in a new landscape now.

A specific, personal example: I do standup comedy. I had written and told some jokes that used racial issues. Not in a derogatory, stereotype-perpetrating way, but in a way that exploited racial tensions for their humorous energy. For instance, here’s one that got big laughs up to November 1st.

“A lot of whites think it’s hypocritical that white people can’t use the n-word, while blacks use it with each other all the time. But I don’t mind. Because white people have our own “n-word.” A word that we don’t mind using with one another, but that we get kind of uptight when we hear blacks and Mexicans call us. That word is “neighbor.””

Today, that joke --- and others like it --- is dead. Not because it’s offensive, but because the reality that supported it --- that of whites being reflexively nervous and afraid of darker skinned people --- simply doesn’t exist anymore in a country where the President is black. That battery is drained.

As much as I hate losing good jokes, this tectonic shift is a very big and awesome thing. Maybe the most big and awesome thing that has ever happened in this country.

2) Metastastized Financialization.

Michael Lewis, author of Liar’s Poker, tells this story better than I can in this article about our current financial debacle, and the two decades of insanity that preceded it.

Since I’ve been aware of America’s economy, I’ve been struck and worried by the outsized prominence that financial services has taken. And had a sneaking suspicion that that sector’s activities were not necessarily providing proportionate value to investors, economies or societies. After all, if there is any subject that I am an expert in, it is failing to provide adequate service to those counting on me.

I’ve also noted with alarm that a great deal of our economic “growth” takes the form of successive bubbles. In my adult life, I’ve watched a broad stock bubble grow and pop, a more narrowly focused Dotcom bubble grow and pop, and a real estate bubble grow and pop. And can’t help but notice that efforts to stimulate the economy after one pop --- i.e. low interest rates --- generally give rise to the next bubble.

I’ve felt like at some point we’ve got to make reforms more substantive than simply inflating the next financial instrument-led bubble to rise out of a recession. At long last it looks like serious thinkers and policymakers are considering what those reforms might be.

3) Dependence on Foreign Oil.

This summer’s stratospheric gas-prices that turned already-suffering American consumers upside down and shook all the money out of our pockets --- while loathsome Oil Execs and Traders enjoyed record profits and bonuses --- finally made believers out of us all. I think Americans realize that we can’t be so dependent on foreign oil suppliers going forward. And that developing a domestic source of energy is at least as vital to American interests --- and worthy of sustained effort and funding --- as picking up some moon rocks, or toppling a petty Middle East dictator.

4) Crazy Christian Bullshit
Yeah, this is a tough drug for America to put down. And it looked like we were going to relapse, when we got a look at that big pretty hunk of Alaskan Ice. But we did resist, and on January 21st we will officially be 100% Creationism-Free at the top levels of government. I’m so proud.

We Are All Even More Fucked

I have deliberately stayed away from commenting on this economic and financial catastrophe because I do not possess a great deal --- fuck, let’s just say any --- expertise in the world of global finance. Mortgage Backed Securities, Credit Default Swaps, monolines… for many years, these words were just chatter that my friends who worked in finance made to eachother while I tried to think of good fart jokes to tell and change the subject.*

But as I have watched Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson “handle” the crisis, I have decided that the financial catastrophe scenario is not really so much about the intricacies of the financial markets as it is about a couple of subjects that I can indeed claim a great deal of expertise in:

a) being over one’s head.
b) fucking up
c) trying desperately to hide a and b.

On Tuesday, Paulson announced that he wouldn’t be using the $700 billion taxpayers gave him to buy up dodgy mortgage backed securities after all.

Never mind that’s what he assured us, implored us, begged us to let him do that a scant two months ago. Now he is going to use that money to buy up bank stock to provide a capital injection, kind of like England did --- and critics of the whole toxic asset-purchase plan suggested in the first place. He has also let it slip that he’s considering other options as well.

In other words, dude is floundering.

This doesn’t look good for us.

In the long run, the US economy is made up of too many greedy, ravenous consumers and efficient, remorseless producers to really fail. I am confident that we will be prosperous, vulgar and insufferably arrogant again.

The only question is how long it will take us to get back there. Unfortunately, there is only one way to get there as soon as possible: do the right thing, at the right time, and with the right amount of firmness.

By that logic, there are many more ways to fuck up and delay our return to economic health.

We could do the wrong things. We could do the right things too late. We could even do the right things at the right time, but do them in a half-assed and unconvincing way. Economic actors hate uncertainty and risk, so if they don’t know how committed the government is to a course of action, then they aren’t going to move until that doubt is removed.

Right now, it looks like the lamest-possible-duck Bush team is failing in each of the three categories. By their own admission, they are doing the wrong things. They are wasting so much time doing these wrong things, that they are delaying doing the right things. And by reversing course and making changes, they are decreasing consumer and investor confidence.

Estimations of how long the credit/financial crisis and the economic slowdown would last are pretty much guesses in the first place. But every time the Government's "solution" has to shift like this, it’s safe to say that we can lengthen it out a bit more.

In other words, this Christmas, only the good little boys and girls will get coal in their stockings. Because that means they can have a few moments of warmth burning those coals in a converted coffee-can fireplace in front of the cardboard box they live in.

Next Christmas, they get nothing. Because they will have boiled and eaten their stockings to survive.

* Who am I kidding? All fart jokes are good.

Kudos to McCain

One has to admire the class that John McCain has shown in his concession speech and afterwards.

Though he seemed to lose his way in the campaign, once he no longer had any alternatives, options or possible actions he really seemed to shine as a person of grace and dignity.

I guess John McCain is just one of those people who is at his best when he has been put in a box.

Bag! Douche

Voting Day. And a Strange Compulsion

Since I will be out of town on Tuesday, I went to the County Registrar's Office in Norwalk to vote early.

After a one hour drive and a three hour wait, I finally got into a voting booth with a numbered ballot in front of me.

For just an instant, I had a powerful temptation to vote for John McCain. A temptation so strong that I actually envisioned myself filling in the numbered oval that corresponded to the McCain/Palin ticket.

This sudden compulsion unnerved me. I would never have imagined that a perverse thought could consume me so, even briefly. This strong and unexpected vision made me understand why people are tempted to have other people piss on them or fuck barnyard animals. A person can get a very real and illicit thrill from doing something that violates a deep, ingrained moral conviction. There is no arguing the fact that breaking a taboo is exciting.

Still, I didn't do it.

Vote for John McCain, that is.

I did let someone piss on me, though. And fucked a barnyard animal tonight. In fact, I sexually ravaged an entire petting zoo. Including a mohair goat, a Vietnamese potbelly pig, and an extremely well-hung Shetland pony. Then I had my exertion-spawned sweat hosed off by the urine of a homeless man who has been eating nothing but asparagus and B vitamins the last three days.

A man has to get his kicks where he can.

But vote Republican? Hey, I'm not some kind of sicko.