Robert L. Terrell

These are broadly unsettling times here in the United States. The war in Iraq is unresolved, and the one in Afghanistan is quickly and ominously going from bad to worse. Hundreds of thousands of people are losing their jobs. The national debt is growing like an untreated cancer. The economy is in recession, and if it isn’t, it is in the next closest state of stasis and contraction. Retired people on fixed incomes are watching their life savings evaporate with every downward tick of the stock market, and millions of bewildered average citizens are on the verge of being thrown out of their homes.

Even though each of the problems presented above deserves major ongoing attention, the nature of mass denial commonly practiced in the U.S. these days ensures that most of them are not being adequately addressed.  Members of the political establishment tend to avoid candid public dialogue about them.  And much of the lapdog, mainstream  press is fascinated with other subjects, such as Sarah Palin’s attire.

Nonetheless, the massive financial meltdown currently underway on Wall Street has begun to fundamentally alter the national dialogue in ways which are destined to have important ramifications for future discourse regarding social change. This is due to the probability that the problems currently roiling financial markets are ominous indications of worse to come.  The resulting crises will inevitably engender new kinds of dialogue regarding the kind of society we want.

Currently, we are attempting to acquire a better sense of the conflagration unfolding on Wall Street.  What we know so far is not reassuring.  The collapsing financial order is cause for major concern.  But as bad as it is, it may not be our most important problem because the putative cures being advocated by those at the center of the crisis don’t really address its convoluted, largely hidden, sources.  Moreover, there is palpable unease spreading the society,  enhanced by recognition that many of those formally responsible for solving the escalating financial crisis are significantly responsible for its existence.  In other words, we are faced with a foxes-guarding-the-hen house situation.

Furthermore, no one in Washington seems to have a clear understanding of the overall crisis.  This includes Congress and the eternally clueless Bush-Chaney White House.  The “I-am-the-Decider” dimension of President Bush’s delusional personality seems to be in remission where the current economic crisis is concerned.  To make matter worse, Washington’s lesser Republican movers-and-shakers appear to be in shock, not the least because their thoroughly discredited free trade mantra is producing undeniably catastrophic economic consequences.  The Democrats are suffering similarly paralyzing ideological shock.

The key point to be understood is that the current financial crisis is so large and threatening that it is fundamentally altering the foundations of the national political dialogue.  As a result, typical political nostrums are inoperative.  This is due to several factors, one of the most important being the fact that many of the political and ideological guideposts that normally serve as markers of moderation and sanity are either irrelevant or inappropriate.  As a result, we are being forced to feel our way forward in much the same manner as a band of retarded, sightless, deaf pilgrims treading a dangerous, unpredictable path along a narrow, irregular perimeter along the crumbling rim high above a bottomless precipice.

The national mainstream press and leaders of the political establishment are currently devoting primary attention to the proposed $700 billion bailout of Wall Street.  Those for and against the unprecedented bailout–that may or may not prove sufficient to eliminate the massive financial crisis it is intended to mitigate–are distributing opinions on an hourly basis.  Worse yet, despite proclamations by those who are touting the $700 billion bailout that they are altruistically committed to serving the nation’s best interests, my best sense is that such comments are merely propagandistic sops ritualistically uttered in order to placate the ignorant. It bears noting that those who are most loudly claiming selfless commitment to serving the nation’s best interests were camped out at the Republican National Convention just weeks ago cynically making fun of people who pursue altruistic careers such as community organizing.

In any event, the overall situation provides fascinating, if not deeply disturbing, insights into the biases and allegiances of the nation’s elites.  For example, before the current financial crisis became toxic due to the ominously declining stock market, conventional mainstream wisdom asserted that government could not afford to address endemic social problems such as chronic homelessness, endemic poverty, under-funded schools, healthcare for the uninsured, or relief for the hundreds of thousands of average citizens who are being evicted from their homes.

Yet, those who have spent decades deriding advocates of a morally responsible social safety net as hopeless dupes committed to socialistic solutions to individual inadequacies, are currently peddling a $700 billion net for the super rich that dwarfs the amounts necessary to eliminate many of the most serious problems that afflict the nation’s poorest citizens.

Given the stakes involved, and the magnitude of the issues being addressed, this will almost certainly turn out to be one of the most important turning points in the nation’s history.  However the current crisis is resolved, the United States will be a different nation by the time this occurs.  Being an optimist, I am inspired by the manner in which the national dialogue is being rearranged.  My hope is that in the immediate future it will be easier to address important national problems because of that rearranged dialogue.

In the interim, we are critically engaged in troubled discourse about the best ways to address financial crises engendered by institutions that have been systematically used to fleece the nation and its inattentive citizens via methods of legalized theft on a scale never before witnessed in the history of humankind.