Is anybody else feeling just kind of totally depressed about the political and economic scene of the moment? And not just for the obvious reasons? As the possibility of an Obama victory becomes more and more tangible, I find myself more and more down about it. Not because I don’t want it: I want it desperately. But because even the possibility seems to be producing an infinitely escalating spiral of spew from hardcore opponents of Obama. I feel like I’m drowning in the sheer madness of it. I read a lot of it and say, “Really, what’s the point of even trying to talk about any of this? This is either someone who has just lost their sense of proportion utterly or someone who is so malicious that my only reasonable response is to edge away slowly and hope they don’t notice me.”
All you folks who’ve thrown around “Bush Derangement Syndrome” so casually as a label in the last seven years. All I can say is that in February 2001, I said to a lot of friends, “Come on, this won’t be so bad.” I did not have strong feelings about either candidate in 2000, to be truthful. I said in October 2001, “Maybe this guy will grow into his role–he’s owed the benefit of the doubt, he asked for us to come together”. (Honestly. Read some of what I’ve put out there about my reaction at the time.) If I ever became “deranged”, it was about things which actually happened, a tangible, real record of failure and malfeasance that I think is historically remarkable in the context of the American Presidency. I’m reading plenty of people now who seem to me so much more deranged, more out-of-their-skulls batshit crazy than the most fringe puppet-waving no-blood-for-oil-sign-waver you could possibly conjure up after a night of watching Fox News in a drunken stupor. So. Seriously, don’t mention “Bush Derangement Syndrome” around me any more, because whatever your yardstick is, if you’re not adding another three or four yards to it right now, you’re either not paying attention or you’re one of the lotus-eaters.
Update Judging from some press reports in the last few days, some of this kind of reaction may be worrying John McCain as well. Now were I him, even as a matter of political calculation, I might wonder if giving a strongly worded speech telling some of his supporters to cut out all the nutty conspiratorial or racist crap would be a shrewd as well as honorable move, giving at least some independents some reason to see McCain as a principled person. It certainly would be a genuinely maverick gesture to make.
*raises hand* I’m feeling it too. It’s gotten to the point where I’m having anxiety dreams about the election. And I could feel my blood pressure go through the roof when I saw yesterday’s Washington Post article about the angry crowds at McCain/Palin rallies. I’m still feeling glum about that, even though McCain has reportedly been calling for people to show a little respect.
So, yes, I hear you.
I keep thinking that the Onion had one of their man-in-the-street pieces with the question “Is America ready for the assassination of its first black President?”, but can’t find it now. Given their record of prophecy with Bush, I am hoping this means it’s a figment of my imagination.
This ‘derangement syndrome’ really got started with Clinton. The intensity of the hatred for Clinton after that election was every bit as strong as against Obama right now. Rush, AmSpec. among others really got their start in 92. That was the peak era of conservative bumper stickering and there were some pretty nasty ones. The hatred of Hillary was especially intense. To some degree, this is playbook the GOP tried to use against Hillary and Bill back then. The Dems really thought they had it ’92 and then only two years later things all changed. The back and forth of the hatred is deeply problematic for American politics.
I’m actually even more depressed, because I think the entire political class is worthless (I find nothing special or exciting about the junior senator from Illinois). This economic mess rests on the backs of the bright guys from Yale, Harvard, MIT, Penn, Stanford, et al. This isn’t a dumb folks recession. The elite failed. Why should we trust them with the levers of government in addition to the levers of the economy.
To Amanda: me too, actual nightmares.
And, the national media continues to be the most corrosive force in American politics, working overtime 24/7 to ensure that nothing resembling a real issue ever reaches the eyes and ears of the American voter.
Both parties are fully invested in their trumped up gotcha politics as a shell game so nobody sees their real work, serving their respective interest groups.
And what do we end up with? Probably a President who was a state legislator four years ago.
This is making me feel pretty good about my strategy of not paying very close attention–it’s not like I’m having trouble making up my mind. In the past, even with all the nasty culture-war rhetoric and Hillary-hating, there was no question but that another white man was gonna end up in the White House. Now there’s a black man running strong and, on the other side, a freakish female number two whose sole purpose is to bring out the tribalistic shock troops (i.e., “energize the base”). Add in a global economic disaster. Is it any surprise that the “deranged” and “out-of-their-skulls batshit crazy” are center stage and raving? Is there a realistic alternative scenario?
After the election the real problems may be pressing enough that the imaginary ones will fade away. I’m not sure whether that’s something to hope for or not.
I’ve had similar feelings about those who have gun nuts over Palin…the Democratic official who said her only qualification was “not having an abortion”; prominent writers and commentators who said she was “not a female” and “not human”.
Then the factual lies: claims that she banned books, charged for rape kits, wants to teach creationism in the classroom. Andrew Sullivan’s ongoing and bizarre obsession with the idea that Trig is really her daughter’s child, not hers.
Most people I have talked to about her don’t know one true thing about her, but are confident in the half dozen untruths they know.
I’m not sure anyone in this race has suffered from “derangement” as much as Palin.
Note that it’s entirely possible to argue Palin is not qualified without resorting to lies and distortions, but few people seem to take that route.
I agree Palin has attracted some obsessive untruths, but Ronald, there are also plenty of sober, well-demonstrated reasons to argue she’s not qualified. I also think that some of the speaking she’s been doing to the “base” in the last month is sufficient reason to oppose her candidacy. Moreover, I think there are reasons to argue that she’s a bad choice that have nothing to do with qualifications. One of the things that *is* evident about her record as an executive as both mayor and governor is that she manages government is a manner very similar to George W. Bush, rewarding loyalty over competence. That alone I’ve seen enough of to last me a lifetime.
In any event, one of the things I’ve argued for here pretty much since I started blogging was that Americans needed to understand (and try to halt) how we got to this impasse in which strong partisans now demonize not only their political opponents in office but entire social constituencies. I’ve made it clear that like Perlstein, I think this is significantly a consequence of Nixonian politics, and to a lesser extent the cultural politics of the New Left circa 1965-68.
But I think is part of what fuels my sense of despair now: we will never be free of it, and I really do think there is a segment of the right which is responsible for that. McCain’s campaign is visibly out of gas on anything remotely resembling the issues at a time of very real national and global crisis. If there was ever a moment where a politician who claims that it’s all about country and not about himself should be nobler than the worst impulses of the creepy-crawling campaign flacks who surround him, it’s this moment. Here is where a leader has to be a leader, and McCain has failed that so badly at a moment when everyone needed him to succeed. Whatever doubts anyone might have about Obama, he’s been controlled, careful, reasonable, restrained. If he should win, he’s owed a space to breathe, to be a President for one and all. It’s just clear to me that he’s not going to get it if that should come to pass. You might well complain that McCain wouldn’t get that chance from me or others if he won. Maybe not. That would be about the manner of his victory, and about the ways in which it furthered the fracturing of American possibility.
Some things I have observed in every election:
– Supporters of each side feel their side is restrained and humble, and the other side is engaged in smear tactics that go beyond the pale, and at this moment I see that feeling on each side. (Interesting question: If I showed you numbers that indicated Obama has done more negative ads than McCain, would you believe it?)
– Each side, when their numbers are down, tends to feel it’s because their candidate is not willing to hit back enough. (McCain supporters right now feel he has not done nearly enough to get details about Obama out to the public.)
– Everyone says they hate negative ads, and polls will show the negatives of whoever is leading the negative ads go up; but each time people pay more attention to the negative ads than others and there is some indication that negative ads tend to be the more accurate ads in political campaigns.
– Each party believes the other is engaged in whatever is the taboo of that election cycle (sexism, racism).
– In a very close election, each side tends to believe the other is engaging in voter fraud or did in fact get the election through fraud.
I always question my own beliefs in cases where what people believe about a factual matter is split down political/racial/gender lines. Truth rarely conforms to group identity.
Timothy said:
> In any event, one of the things I????e argued for here pretty much since I started blogging was that Americans needed to understand (and try to halt) how we got to this impasse in which strong partisans now demonize not only their political opponents in office but entire social constituencies.
I agree with you strongly on this…so strongly that my own blog is named and themed on the idea of civil discussion, and more importantly, civil discussion in the face of strong disagreement. The civil nature of your discussion and the in-depth comments here is what attracted me to this blog.
However, I disagree that some particular segment of the right is to blame. I live in San Francisco. If I go put a McCain sign outside, there is a good chance my house will be vandalized; if I put a McCain sticker on my bumper, I can pretty much guarantee my car will be keyed. Most people in my city and this region would pretty much classify me as insane if they thought I was a McCain supporter.
I have to sit through meetings at work where everyone else, including management, is making fun of the Republican VP candidate while I dare say nothing, and where I’ve heard management spread talk about someone they just discovered was a Republican. “I guess you never know!”
I find some recent research compelling (I would provide links, but I know know if comments with links get treated as spam by this system) showing that conservatives are able to empathize with liberals and understand how they think about issues, but liberals tend to be incapable of empathizing with conservatives, and simply don’t understand how or why they think the way they do. I suspect that has a lot to do with what we’re seeing now.
On the other side, I talked with a friend yesterday who lives in Georgia, and who complains that if she were to put an Obama sign on her lawn, it would be vandalized. So I understand there is no monopoly here.
And that is the point: There is no monopoly. You can blame conservatives if you wish, but from where I sit in the Bay Area, that leaves my experiences unexplained.
Some things I have observed in every election:
– Supporters of each side feel their side is restrained and humble, and the other side is engaged in smear tactics that go beyond the pale, and at this moment I see that feeling on each side. (Interesting question: If I showed you numbers that indicated Obama has done more negative ads than McCain, would you believe it?)
– Each side, when their numbers are down, tends to feel it??s because their candidate is not willing to hit back enough. (McCain supporters right now feel he has not done nearly enough to get details about Obama out to the public.)
– Everyone says they hate negative ads, and polls will show the negatives of whoever is leading the negative ads go up; but each time people pay more attention to the negative ads than others and there is some indication that negative ads tend to be the more accurate ads in political campaigns.
– Each party believes the other is engaged in whatever is the taboo of that election cycle (sexism, racism).
– In a very close election, each side tends to believe the other is engaging in voter fraud or did in fact get the election through fraud.
I always question my own beliefs in cases where what people believe about a factual matter is split down political/racial/gender lines. Truth rarely conforms to group identity.
Timothy said:
> In any event, one of the things I’ve argued for here pretty much since I started blogging was that Americans needed to understand (and try to halt) how we got to this impasse in which strong partisans now demonize not only their political opponents in office but entire social constituencies.
I agree with you strongly on this??so strongly that my own blog is named and themed on the idea of civil discussion, and more importantly, civil discussion in the face of strong disagreement. The civil nature of your discussion and the in-depth comments here is what attracted me to this blog.
However, I disagree that some particular segment of the right is to blame. I live in San Francisco. If I go put a McCain sign outside, there is a good chance my house will be vandalized; if I put a McCain sticker on my bumper, I can pretty much guarantee my car will be keyed (it has been keyed before for political reasons). Most people in my city and this region would pretty much classify me as insane if they thought I was a McCain supporter.
I have to sit through meetings at work where everyone else, including management, is making fun of the Republican VP candidate while I dare say nothing, and where I??ve heard management spread talk about someone they just discovered was a Republican. ??I guess you never know!??
I find some recent research compelling (I would provide links, but I know know if comments with links get treated as spam by this system) showing that conservatives are able to empathize with liberals and understand how they think about issues, but liberals tend to be incapable of empathizing with conservatives, and simply don??t understand how or why they think the way they do. I suspect that has a lot to do with what we??re seeing now.
On the other side, I talked with a friend yesterday who lives in Georgia, and who complains that if she were to put an Obama sign on her lawn, it would be vandalized. So I understand there is no monopoly here.
And that is the point: There is no monopoly. You can blame conservatives if you wish, but from where I sit in the Bay Area, that leaves my experiences unexplained.
Ronald,
I’m always deeply frustrated (the subject of this post) when someone assures me they absolutely commit to civil discussion, even as they write the following under the rubric of “Better Angels,” in a post entitled “Explaining complicated financial history in 90 seconds” …
“But politically, it’s clear that the Democrats are lying through their teeth right now, trying to escape their complete culpability in whatever role Fannie and Freddie did play in all this. Whatever your politics, when it comes to figuring out what should come next and who should do it, you should be aware of who was in fact for and against responsible oversight of these government-assisted entities, and that in fact irresponsible government interference played a big part in Fannie and Freddie acting as they did.”
http://betterangels.typepad.com/weblog/2008/10/explaining-complicated-financial-history-in-90-seconds.html
I’m sorry, but this is just dishonest and intellectually lazy in so many ways (there are enough blogging economists to know better), and is in my mind the soft-toned version of the agonizing derangement this post is actually about.
“but this is just dishonest and intellectually lazy in so many ways” (that I won’t bother to address it).
Point … made.
I didn’t watch the video at the website, but the post makes no claims about the size of the GSEs role in the current economic situation. The claim is the democrats trying to distance themselves from what they did to Senator Shelby and OFHEO when they tried to tighten restrictions and oversight of the GSEs. That is a fair point in my mind, sure the GSEs bought off a lot of republicans too, but at the end of the day Shelby (and the WSJ editorial page) was right ON THIS ISSUE, and the folks on the payroll of the GSEs were wrong.
The ranting rightwing version of this argument which Tim would refer to is simply repeating that Barney Frank’s lover is an employee of the GSEs and Frank sits on the oversight board … combine corruption, competence and homosexuality in one shot, with more colorful language 😉
> I???? sorry, but this is just dishonest and intellectually lazy in so many ways
To defend myself a bit, right before that statement, I said:
“Now, I don’t know that these tell the whole story, and I think the second video is a bit over the top — I listen to Megan McArdle when she says that there is no one source to the current problems, and that loaning to the poor doesn’t track as causing things.”
I certainly recommend people listen to Megan McArdle on economic issues over anything I might say, since she actually knows what she’s talking about, and pretty much every time I discuss economics I link to her or someone of equal stature and suggest people pay attention to them over me.
I was, though, more strident in that post than I would usually be, perhaps suffering from a bit of “derangement” because I was watching Barney Frank and others accuse the Republicans of exactly what Frank and other Democrats had been pushing for all along with Fannie and Freddie, and I found it frustrating that, in conversations I was involved in, people simply refused to believe the Democrats could possibly have had anything to do with it, even though you could watch them on video in the act.
I guess the difficulty is coming to a common understanding of some of the key points. We all tend to believe whatever fits into our own worldview and discard evidence to the contrary.
So on the Fannie/Freddie stuff, it would be great if people could acknowledge that in at least that part of our economic crisis, the Democrats did push for less oversight in favor of more risk so that more lower-income people could get houses. Their goal was laudable, after all, and if it didn’t work out, it’s okay to say this is one where the risk/benefit analysis (the “roll of the dice” that Barney Frank said he wanted) didn’t work out. But to flatly deny their involvement…well that leads to people just yelling at each other.
To admit their involvement could then lead to a discussion of, “Well, what should we be doing about this, since that didn’t work out so well?”
For my part, as a more-or-less McCain supporter, I’m perfectly willing to say that he’s out to lunch on much of his economics. On the economic side if I could press restart and get two new candidates, I’d be delighted. I’m not going to pretend a candidate I generally support is somehow magically perfect in all arenas, and in fact I think admitting their flaws leads to the more interesting, detailed, and nuanced conversation.
It’s when someone says to me, “If you think that about McCain’s economics, how can you support him?” that a real conversation begins.
Okay, let’s set aside politics for the moment and look at one reality (governance) and one policy that is a distinction between the right and left — the proper level of regulation in a financial system.
The one reality, if we’re honest about governance for the last eight years, is that the Republicans were in charge and ran most of the country from “K” Street. Even Republican judges were purged from the Bush Administration if they were insufficiently rabid about Democrats. International law was ignored if it didn’t align with Republican “values,” so we have a very hard case to make if we think the Democrats (a minority party in every way and that often had no time to even look at bills they were required to vote on) exploded the world economy (which is significantly larger than American “sub-prime mortgages”).
With respect to a conversation about the proper place of regulation, we must shine some light on Greenspan to be informed participants. Greenspan refused for over a decade to even write the rules for regulating mortgages with law in hand (from 1994) to do so:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/159346/output/print
And he believed the market should regulate derivatives and powerfully rebuffed repeated efforts of Congress to set boundaries for these arcane instruments.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/business/economy/09greenspan.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
The result of unregulated capitalism (a relaxing of the laws to regulate insurance instruments) allowed AIG Financial Products, a small group in London, to unleash this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/business/28melt.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&pagewanted=print
At the end of the day, you can’t claim civility while calling me an economic terrorist. An explosives-laden terrorist can at best take out a few $billions in property. Economic terrorism has just eliminated $trillions and is poised to destroy more. It’s important that we learn what actually caused this and save capitalism from itself or the fabric of world markets, which are based on trust not profit, will not be restored.
The polarized, nasty poltical campaigns we are watching and the trashing of our Constitution, both in spirit and in letter, are commonplace in our history. The history is very clear on this. The new Constitution recognized the two Americas of the time, each with a different view of the world. Benjamin Franklin, in 1790, during the first government under the Constitution, sumbitted a petition to Congress calling for abolition of slavery. So did others. These acts triggered hateful responses from representative of Georgia and South Carolina. The themes they used in their speeches became the basis for “logical” argument for generations. Blacks are inferior, their natural position is to be slaves, they can never assimilate into white society because they will always revert to their mean of living as brutes, the only way to keep a free population of blacks from outbreeding the white population would be to restrict their sexual intercourse and, like Herod, kill their newborns.
I don’t know what was in Franklin’s mind at the time, but his action says to me that he wanted to make the Constitution into the embodiment of the “all men are created equal” part of the Declaration. Because, as we all know, the Constitution granted the solid, sullen, surly, slaveholding southern states, masters of brutality and extortion all, privileges that disproportionately increased their representation in the House, Senate, Electoral College, and increased their power in party caucuses, as they emerged, so that the political leaders of these rotten state governments and economies, could control nominations and leadership positions in Congress.
Leonard L. Richards details this excessive, and corrosive, power in “The Slave Power, the free North and Southern domination, 1780-1860.”
John Quincy Adams was Secretary of State under James Madison. John C. Calhoun was Secretary of War. Both men would run for president in 1824. Adams won and Calhoun became Vice-President. In 1820 Madison called a cabinet meeting to discuss admitting Maine as a free state, and the Missouri enabling act which would lead to the admission of MO as a slave state. Afterwards Calhoun and Adams continued talking about slavery as they walked back to their offices. Later Adams wrote these remarks in his diary:
“The discussion of this Missouri question has betrayed the secret of their souls. In the abstract they [the defenders of slavery] admit that slavery is an evil, they disclaim all participation in the introduction of it, and cast it all upon the shoulders of our old Grandam Britain. But when probed to the quick upon it, they show at the bottom of their souls pride and vainglory in their condition of masterdom. They fancy themselves more generous and noblehearted than the plain freemen who labor for subsistence. They look down upon the simplicity of a Yankee???? manners, because he has no habits of overbearing like theirs and cannot treat Negroes like dogs.
It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice; for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin? It perverts human reason, and reduces man endowed with logical powers to maintain that slavery is sanctioned by the Christian religion, that slaves are happy and contented in their condition, that between master and slave their ties of mutual attachment and affection, that the virtues of the master are refined and exalted by the degradation of the slave; while at the same time they vent execrations upon the slave trade, curse Britain for having given them slaves, burn at the stake Negroes convicted of crimes for the terror of the example, and writhe in agonies of fear at the very mention of human rights as applicable to men of color.
The impression produced upon my mind by the progress of this discussion is that the bargain between freedom and slavery contained in the Constitution of the United States is morally and politically vicious, inconsistent with the principles upon which alone our Revolution can be justified; cruel and oppressive, by riveting the chains of slavery, by pledging the faith of freedom to maintain and perpetuate the tyranny of the master; and grossly unequal and impolitic, by admitting that slaves are at once enemies to be kept in subjection, property to be secured or restored to their owners, and persons not to be represented themselves, but for whom their masters are privileged with nearly a double share of representation. The consequence has been that this slave representation has governed the Union. ”
Sorry for the length of the quote, but I couldn’t decide what to omit. Adams’ remarks echo the warnings of Madison and Hamilton in the Federalist and of Washington in his Farewell Address. They warned that there is a certain kind of human being, who, if given the chance, will rule others in a tyrannical way. George Washington’s telling phrase was these men were/are, “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled.” Madison and Washington both warned us that these men would combine into parties that would be adversed to the common good. Washington said that the “alternate” domination of parties in our political system would lead to the ruination of liberty.
These themes have been mentioned by others ever since. In recent times the American Psychiatric Association has described how to identify one of these “cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled” men by listing a set of behaviours they exhibit. Jimmy Carter recently described them in his book, “Our Endangered Values.” He calls them religious fundamentalists. John Dean describes them in, “Conservatives without Conscience,” and “Broken Government.” Norman J. Ornstein and Thomas E. Mann describe their effects in “Broken Branch.” Dean’s first book adopts a theme, perhaps unknowingly, that Martha Stout advances in “The Sociopath Next Door.” She says that a certain kind of human being exists that will willingly, uncaringly, do harm to others. She starts with the APA’s definiton of the antisocial personality disorder and adds the characteristic that these people are without a conscience. She, like, Madison, Hamilton, Washington, Adams, and Dean, (there are many others), warns us about the harm these people can do if they gain power over others. She estimates that 4% of the population is sociopathic.
So, madman that I am, I have long held the opinion that there are actually two varieties of human beings: Varietas Tyrannis, and Varietas Libertas. Today the population is weighted in favor of liberti, but, because tyranni are much more aggressive, their effects on our society have dominated our history.
These two varieties are in action all the time, of course, but we tend to clump in groups that we like, that we harmonize with, so we usually don’t have to deal with the opposite variety in our daily lives. But election time reminds us that they are here and part of our nation.
Political Parties, reflect these two varieties and their names change. Democrats dominated the South from 1860 until LBJ signed civil rights legislation in the 1960’s. Those Democrats were controlled by Varietas Tyrannis. But Nixon, Reagan, and others changed all that and now the Republican Party is controlled by Varietas Tyrannis.
Because the human mind is so powerful, we have developed all sorts of political theories to explain and justify tyrannical behavior, “states rights” is my favorite. But, at bottom, what we see on the political stage is creatures following their evolved natures. Evolution by Natural Selection controls our behavior and our politics. You are what you do — to others.
The Two-Party system, and congressional rules, nourish these two varieties. The system had evolved so that once a tyrannus gains power he can keep it as long as he wants. Even liberti want to keep their hold on power. So we have only one real party in America and that is the “office-holders” Party. Things have been organized so that congressional members can flourish so long as they hold office, no matter whether they have a majority.
So, the political system the Framers designed will work if, and only if, the office holders have the acumen, dedication, and integrity of George Washington. The rest is history, right? He may well have been in a variety of his own.
So in our political dialogue, so frustrating as it is, we should not be surprised when we don’t understand each others. We are not from different planets, and we are not examples of different species, but we are varieties of our own species.
Whether an individual human being works for the common good depends on his nature, on whether he is a libertus or a tyrannus. And whether or not an institution is a force for the common good depends on the nature of its leaders: liberti or tyranni. Charles Darwin foresaw this problem. In the third chapter of “Origin” he included this section heading:
Struggle for Life most severe between
Individuals and Varieties of the same Species.
Controlling a party that in turn controls Congress provides the opportunity for liberti to work for the common good, and provides tyranni the opportunity to raid the national treasury.
hestal, you need to get you own blog . . .
All comments welcome as long as we stay reasonably cool with each other in the conversation…
1.Dems argued for FNM and FRE to make more loans to poor people
2.Paulson sold stock options worth $700,000,000 before he took job in Treasury
3.AIG paid a dividend of $600,000,000 2 weeks before they declared bankruptcy
4.Taxpayers foot the bill
5.McCain and Obama argue about who has answers to the problems the other created
Seems to me like everybody did/is doing what they were taught to do…let’s teach them new lessons starting today. A deeper commitment to be skeptical and search for truth? I know T. Burke’s up for the job
I just don’t understand economics and I don’t undestand the underlying causes of the current crisis, but I thought that FNM and FRE did not make loans. I thought they guaranteed them, or perhaps bought the ones made by private institutions. If this is correct doesn’t that mean that the private sector actually decided to whom loans should be made? I wonder if the percentage of mortgage loans made by FNM and FNR went up and the private loans went down. I’ll bet they went down. Corruption, like water, follows the path of least resistance until it finds the lowest point in the moral landscape.
And even if the idea of making more loans to poor people was a bad one, damn those poor people, there was nothing in the law that said the private enterprises had to bundle them up, slice and dice them, get bogus valuations from corrupt rating agencies (who like accounting companies during the S&L crisis covered themselves in shame), and then pay themselves huge bonuses based on the revenues generated by these overrated and oversold mortgage-backed “securities?”
In other words the lesson my father taught me when we had the sex talk, was that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. These masters of the universe noticed they could steal and so they did. Sort of like all-male country clubs, they can discriminate so they do.
I think the cause of all evil things is the human mind, literally. Theses minds are always well ahead of legislation. While we citizens sleep, and while legislators drink themselves under the table, where they find cash taped to the bottom, evil is planning its moves far into the future.
I share Bitterb4’s recommendation of Herr Burke as truth czar.
Yes, you are correct hestal about Fannie and Freddie. I just use them as a proxy which I think is ok for the example. President Clinton said in an interview recently that what he likes about or what is reassuring about Obama is his need to make his advisers “make him understand it” when its vital. Obama also says often during his great stump speeches that “you” or “we” are going to do this, not “I”…well i think he says “I” a little more now that its getting close to the election;). But, my point is I think he comprehends the interconnectedness of society especially at a human level so much better than others. Something so many more will realize through this financial crisis. It may be sort of good thing that the presidential election and crisis came to a head concurrently (for bigger reasons than to boost Obama’s poll numbers). I just hope its not going to end the way I think it is because America’s collective task to restore its economy and moral standing in the world (under his leadership i hope) is going to bigger than anyone ever thought
Bitterb4:
The October 15 issue of the NYT online has an editorial that shows the impact of the CRA law on home mortgages and on the current financial crisis. I suppose one might say that the NYT has cherry-picked the facts to defend the act and the party that passed it, or one could say that the folks who caused the current crisis have found, with the help of the party that did not pass the act but neglected to oversee it, and with the help of the right wing media, a scapegoat.
Truth has again been thwarted. Ideology is indeed fiction.
the most fringe puppet-waving no-blood-for-oil-sign-waver
I haven’t seen him in years — side effect of being in Hawai’i. He still out there?