Irrational Non-exuberance:
Who's in Charge Here Anyway?

by Doc Cuddy

The more popular metaphor is that of the "bubble." Now everybody talks as if we all knew that the only value in a 5000-level NASDAQ was speculative. Whatever you do, don't re-run those old MSNBC tapes. Don't look at last year's Forbes. And best forget completely the endless column inches of WSJ hype.

We went up. We came down. In the coming down, we lost, they say, $3 trillion. Not to worry, they say. It was only "paper" wealth.

So now we're in the economic doldrums.

We had already fallen into the electoral doldrums (the less said about that, the better).

And, as per plan, 90s art (now there's an oxymoron for you) had already forecast what was coming. When Julian Schnabel resurfaces as an admired moviemaker, you know there's big trouble ahead.

"Big" is the operative word here. Big money guys on Wall Street. Big money guys in Washington.

The second operative word is "old". As in "dinosaur." The big money guys installed a big money government which promptly put a bunch of true dinosaurs in place to run things. Cold war dinosaurs in foreign policy positions. Christian war dinosaurs in domestic policy positions.

Star Wars lives, now called "missile-defense." State religion lives, now called "faith-based giving." Education reform lives, now called "national standardized testing." Tax reform lives, now called equal tax cuts for all except of course it turns out the top 1% are a lot more equal than the rest of us. Environmental protect lives, now called "rape of the pristine Arctic." Racial equality lives, now called "put a few vacuous Uncle Tom's and Aunt Tomasina's in posts of high visibility."

Above all, Mr. Feel-good lives. The senior class president, cheerleader for us all (see photo), who darn it just can't seem to get his West Texas mouth around English grammar, but he's such a nice guy with that grin and that meek little school-teacher wife, and you just know in spite of his daily dose of malapropisms he means well. So off he goes around the country doing his job as head of the richest most powerful country in history which he understands to be the job of making us all feel good about the dinosaur initiatives coming out of the dinosaur doldrums.

We, nation of sheep (at least for now), let it happen. Fifty percent of us voted. And less than half of that 50% voted from Him. Which means the dinosaur mandate rests on 1/4 of the adult population. Yet we quietly absorb his blather and the blabber of his ilk as his herd of pea-brained dinosaurs stomp around with heedless destruction in the lovely jungle.

What's it gonna take to get us into the streets? Have we gone to sleep for good?

I don't think so. Why? Let us return to the received wisdom of our lately departed president: It's (still) the economy, stupid. The dinosaurs are riding fairly high now, but as the economic and environmental disasters gain added momentum from their almost entirely unbridled greed, we'll begin to stir fitfully in our pseudo-affluent sleep.

Bad times are acoming, sad to say. But therein, in yet another reprise of human history, lies hope.

END

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