Barbara Ehernreich’s most recent blog post relates the suicide of a woman facing foreclosure on her home. Robert Reich’s penultimate post, before he becomes one of the 40% of Americans who can afford to take time off this summer, relates the yet to be fully realized suicide of the American economy.
Reich, the lone leftist/populist in the Clinton administration, where he served as secretary of labor, says that the inadvertent lancing of the housing boil has exposed the underlying causes of our economic woes, specifically its reliance on consumer spending and the collision of that reliance with the increasing inability of consumers, other than the very wealthy, to spend. Ehrenreich, a stalwart Democratic Socialist, says that the suicide of genuinely desperate housewife Carlene Balderrama reflects a truly unfortunate reversal of the days, in the late 1800s and during the Great Depression, when home- and land-owners aimed their outrage, and sometimes their guns, at the foreclosing lien holders and their uniformed factota rather than at themselves.
Reich’s solution to the economic mess is to “rebuild the American economy from the bottom up,” an effort that includes universal affordable health care, affordable higher education, rebuilding and advancing physical and other national infrastructures, and a uniformly progressive tax system across all levels of government, from local to federal.
Ehrenriech’s solution to the passivity of borrowers at the ends of their ropes is militancy in both the political and physical senses. Reich’s prescription is only marginally more likely to be adopted than hers, which has no chance at all unless this badass recession turns into a badass depression. Until then, recessed and depressed homeowners are considerably more likely to shoot themselves than the holders of their mortgages, if they can even figure out who that is after the loan has been sliced up and pieced out to a dozen or so now-ailing buyers.
I should note here that I’m not advocating individual or mob violence as a solution to financial difficulties; only the credible threat of it.
I’m told that the November election offers a choice between change we can believe in and something else (does anyone know the McCain tag line?). Barack Obama’s slogan has always struck me as odd, since the intersection of belief and reality is often about as heavily trafficked as Robert Johnson’s crossroads; if anyone is there at all, it’s as likely as not to be just you and the devil.
But Obama’s adherents seem to think it means something, and to like it, even though the only changes he’s delivered during his time in the Senate and as a presidential candidate have been ones in fundraising and policy position. George Bush inspired considerable belief, on as little evidence and not much more hysteria, back when he had a 90% approval rating. All things considered, the slogan carries at least as much threat as promise.
This is to say that Obama won’t be delivering the universal health care, progressive taxation, reconstituted infrastructure and affordable, high-quality education that Reich thinks are necessary to create a sustainable economy, while John McCain might very well deliver the conditions that Ehrenreich thinks are necessary to inspire homeowners and other consituents of the aggrieved classes to stick together and up for themselves. Whatever doubts one might have about his capacity to take Bush’s hideously malformed ball and run with it should have more to do with the weakness of his flesh than the willingness of his spirit; he could well die before he gets the chance to wreak genuine havoc.
Obama, conversely, has the vigor of youth crippled by a compromiser’s, if not compromised, soul, and his capacity to deliver what his more ardent supporters unaccountably think he means to is entirely a matter of desire — his, not theirs. Once he’s in office, their belief will become a curiosity. Bearded Lady, Alligator Boy, Obama Believer.
I’m no less susceptible to belief than anyone else. When Bush was popular, I believed him to be a black hole and all that is good and holy to be trapped beyond his event horizon. At the moment, I believe John McCain to be a near-perfect vehicle for bringing about a 1930′s-style ignition of a broad, progressive political consciousness, and I believe Barack Obama to be a near-perfect pithing pole for the same.
I can’t quite bring myself to vote for McCain even though I believe him to be a much more effective radicalizing force, but I’ve given up on Obama because I no longer believe in belief.
Many politicians have ardent supporters who are deluded about the true abilities of their candidate. I question how special Obama supporters are in this context.
Also, to achieve real change, you have to have deep belief and hope that it will happen. Given the depths we have suffered, I understand why such a message attracts. Some want to believe in something again.
But, won’t he just fail us? I don’t know. The guy simply hasn’t offered a real chance to show what he will do, though he backed a few measures as a legislator that suggests he will do some good. And, is likely to attract some (like Samantha Powers, though her new hubby Cass Sunstein sometimes leaves something to be desired) good and credible sorts.
Going beyond belief, I think factually there is enough to give him a shot. I shall repeat that many of his supporters aren’t just blinded by pixie dust. And, some realize the reason for wariness.
As to McCain, he seems pretty healthy (look at Cheney — shades of Lionel Barrymore’s character in “It’s A Wonderful Life”), and will have time enough to do harm. Selling your soul to the devil for gain tends to be problematic, esp. if you don’t have Daniel Webster on your side.
The more I hear from Samantha Power, the less I like her. She seems to me an American exceptionalist with a kind heart, and although she quotes George Bernard Shaw’s paean to the unreasonable man, she doesn’t seem to believe it.
I should probably start issuing a disclaimer with respect to Obama supporters, although I thought “more ardent” to be a sufficient qualifier. I know they’re not all uniformly smitten. I do think all but the most jaded have unreasonable expectations, by which I mean they expect something.
As for McCain, I’m not sure he’s healthy enough, mentally or physically, to survive two terms, and I doubt that one would be sufficient to bring on the revolution.
Last time I reference SP here, you liked her. I shall keep in mind that she is not really a good example anymore.
Yeah, I know. I’ve read more of her stuff since then, and arrived at the conclusion that she means well but has a huge blind spot about America’s historical tendency to do at least as much harm by intervening in the affairs of others as by not intervening. We may be the good guys, but even if one grants the premise, we’ve arrived at the designation by default.
What you have with John W. Balderrama, Carlene’s widower, is a PREDATORY BORROWER, and there’s no lack of those out there. Pretend it was YOUR house that this guy bought and then quit paying for a couple of years later.
Evil is as evil does. This man filed for bankruptcy protection three times in three years, just to delay the day when something would have to be done. He FAILED TO APPEAR at two of the three Creditors’ meetings, and he FAILED TO PAY as he agreed he would in order to gain Chapter 13 confirmation and protection. Those payments, respectively, were to be $527 (2004), $740 (2005), and $1066 (2006), and he wouldn’t make those payments TO SAVE ANYBODY’S LIFE, LET ALONE HERS.
This woman had far bigger problems than house payments. She was married to a lying obstructionist, and he’s far too tough to be pushed around by The Feds.
He was $44,000 in arrears on that mortgage, and he damned well knew it, when that last Ch 13 was dismissed, as it damned well should have been. They’d only been living in that house for a few years, and he was $44K in arrears. What was he doing with his money? He was making $90 grand a year by 2006. What’s wrong with this picture?
The police may have been willing to believe this sad story about the poor lady victim of the nasty mortgage company, but it appears that Mr. Balderrama, according to news published recently, is denying that he ever filed for bankruptcy. Those shotguns were all his, and she didn’t know how to use them, let alone load them. They didn’t have a particularly long marriage at all, and I suspect that she was tired of living with a man who couldn’t attend a Creditors’ Meeting to save her life. I suspect that he was as tired of living with her as she was of him, and he’d run his clock out on delay with the help of the Federal Government.
I do not believe that this woman killed herself, at all. That house backs up to woods and a river, and I think that this whole thing was engineered by a person who believes all the garbage he feeds everybody else. He’s a liar, and a fraud, or at least he sure was to the Federal Bankruptcy Court.