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A couple of days ago I spent a hot Madrid summer evening sitting in a sidewalk café, chatting and reminiscing late into the night over tapas with a group of Americans from San Francisco, who you might say were a good cross section of modern progressive, middle class America with several different ethnic heritages represented. In common: education, income, residence and liberal tendencies.
The reason I am providing so much context is because, well into the evening, the talk turned to the Greek debt crisis, which led to Goldman Sachs' role in cooking Greece's books in order for them to enter the Euro, which is the origin of their problems today. At the mention of Goldman Sachs, there settled over the conversation a type of silent, ice-cold murderous hatred that I don't associate with middle class America. A very "un-American" type of hatred; as if you mentioned the Chinese to a Filipino or the Serbians to a Croatian or the Germans to an elderly Jewish person... not an outburst of eyeball-popping expletives, just something hard and cold and deadly, more like the Balkans or of people who fought the Spanish Civil War, than any educated, progressive, middle-America I have ever known.
Observing this change of mood... its depth and coldness, for the first time in many years I got the urge to return to the states and take a trans-continental bus ride, while I still can, and just listen to Americans talk, unfiltered by the media and the system. I got the feeling which I really cannot confirm from here, that the entire system, from the Wall Street encumbered, Obama administration to Michele Bachmann's clown-shop Tea Party are only acting out a farce to distract people from the whiff of cold hatred I picked up that night.
I don't know who would have the nerve to do it, but I got the feeling that the politician who promises to put Lloyd Blankfein and all who sail in him in jail with Bernie Madoff, for the rest of their lives, might sweep the polls in 2012. There is definitely the smell of blood in the air. DS
The reason I am providing so much context is because, well into the evening, the talk turned to the Greek debt crisis, which led to Goldman Sachs' role in cooking Greece's books in order for them to enter the Euro, which is the origin of their problems today. At the mention of Goldman Sachs, there settled over the conversation a type of silent, ice-cold murderous hatred that I don't associate with middle class America. A very "un-American" type of hatred; as if you mentioned the Chinese to a Filipino or the Serbians to a Croatian or the Germans to an elderly Jewish person... not an outburst of eyeball-popping expletives, just something hard and cold and deadly, more like the Balkans or of people who fought the Spanish Civil War, than any educated, progressive, middle-America I have ever known.
Observing this change of mood... its depth and coldness, for the first time in many years I got the urge to return to the states and take a trans-continental bus ride, while I still can, and just listen to Americans talk, unfiltered by the media and the system. I got the feeling which I really cannot confirm from here, that the entire system, from the Wall Street encumbered, Obama administration to Michele Bachmann's clown-shop Tea Party are only acting out a farce to distract people from the whiff of cold hatred I picked up that night.
I don't know who would have the nerve to do it, but I got the feeling that the politician who promises to put Lloyd Blankfein and all who sail in him in jail with Bernie Madoff, for the rest of their lives, might sweep the polls in 2012. There is definitely the smell of blood in the air. DS
4 comments:
I wish this were the case but as someone who lives stateside, it's not. How many Americans could even successfully identify Lloyd Blankfein? Probably less than 1%. While an adept politician might promise justice to the malefactors of great wealth, a successful politician can simply change the subject. Whose fault is it really? How about that woman of color over there popping out babies? Or those illegal Mexican migrants laying claim to our Social Security? Or those environmentalists who won't let us drill for oil off Santa Barbara? They're the ones to blame because they've already have been identified as enemies by right-wing media.
The right rules here by creating cultural discontent and blaming liberalism for their monster. They own the media and the message. And they have the money now that they promised the wealthy that they shall never pay extra upkeep for their looting operation.
America is a 21st century economic behemoth ruled by witless rubes from rural states. The Founding Fathers, in their infinite wisdom, gave these rubes disproportionate power in our system of government. The contradictions have finally borne toxic fruit. It induces a cascade of effects from paralysis and fatigue to outright derangement. To quote George Bush, "this sucker's going down".
I am talking about educated, middle class, Americans, who read the papers and know who Blankfein is; not alienated, uninformed folks. That was what impressed me. That kind of cold hatred is not something I associate with the educated, American, middle class... That is what I find significant, and why I wrote about it.
Yes, David. Indirectly I think Frank Rich's article underlines your point:
http://nymag.com/print/?/news/frank-rich/obama-economy/presidents-failure/
After feeling the euphoria, the high emotions, I too have something that simmers uncomfortably close to disdain for Obama.
His amorality is excruciating. His allegiance to 'Perpetual war for perpetual peace' (as Gore Vidal wrote about many moons ago), his war on whistleblowers, his inability to grow a set regarding the depression, jobs, economics, blah, blah, blah.
Aaarrrrrrg.
Yes, David. Indirectly I think Frank Rich's article underlines your point:
http://nymag.com/print/?/news/frank-rich/obama-economy/presidents-failure/
After feeling the euphoria, the high emotions, I too have something that simmers uncomfortably close to disdain for Obama.
His amorality is excruciating. His allegiance to 'Perpetual war for perpetual peace' (as Gore Vidal wrote about many moons ago), his war on whistleblowers, his inability to grow a set regarding the depression, jobs, economics, blah, blah, blah.
Aaarrrrrrg. serli
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