Elsewhere in these pages I have discussed the subject of systems and how they go bad. (See Archives No. 41.7: Systems and Traditions) In this piece I would like to get a bit more specific and address our “system,” that entity called America, which, I would allege, you could find many Americans would insist is exceptional, somewhat, if not actually, God-given and fated to be some self-righting ship of destiny (remember the hype about the Titanic?) that will sail on to the “end times” on a messianic wave. We are an historically myopic people who have been around for only a couple of centuries in a resource-blessed land we ripped off from the Indian-genous peoples. We don’t have a long range view. But we are now ruled (the people who run government business and social institutions in America) by a generation whose parents survived the Great Depression and WWII, and who we have called “the greatest generation,” in spite of the fact that they have raised the creeps who have given us what promises to be an even greater depression (while hey go to the casino or invest with Bernie Madoff). They are our parents, bless them. But the “greatest”?; let’s leave that to history or the people inured to “top-ten” lists.
Americans are people who like to be left alone. We still have the residue of our agrarian past and rugged individualism—traits that sole politicians like to allude to when they are anti-taxes, pro gun control, and ignore when they want to control your sex life. We like to believe that we have a great system, one that is composed of Christianity, Capitalism, and the Constitution, a system of belief, enterprise and governance that is uniquely self-reinforcing, a three-walled bastion that can repel anything history throws against it. Yes We Can! Americans want that system to guarantee their progress and safety, insure that “our kids will have an even better life than we enjoy.” They don’t want to “do government” every day; they want to do their jobs and go fishing, play golf or veg-out in front of the Super Bowl with nachos. They want their political leaders to keep things running, securely and smoothly (with no taxes), and their banker to keep their money safe, they want to live with people just like themselves, but want the right to own a veritable arsenal of weapons in case somebody threatens any of it. They would rather spend their money on NASCAR, monster truck races, season baseball tickets, or a trip to Las Vegas, than on union dues or charitable donations. They really liked Reagan’s “morning in America,” a place that only ever existed in the addled recesses of the Gipper’s Hollywood mind.
So that’s the “establishment shot,” as they say in Hollywood. But “morning in America” is long gone, and the sun looks like it is going to set earlier than we anticipated. (We had an anomalous interlude of about 25 years after WWII, when we had the world pretty much to ourselves, but that was over with our messing with Vietnam and our addiction to foreign oil.) After building one of the most successful countries ever Americans have managed to screw themselves. There are two somewhat interrelated ways in which they have done this. This is the economic part.
America has a bad case of a social disease that we usually attribute to less developed countries: Corruption. When those of us who travel and live abroad encounter it we usually assign it to “the cost of doing business” in those places. The mordida in Mexico, baksheesh in the Middle East, cumshaw, or quanxi in the Far East. As s tour guide and escort I paid off guides and officials in a variety of places to make sure things went more smoothly, or to get somebody out of a jam. I also recognized that there was a bigger, more systemic level of corrupt activity, the kind we see erupt occasionally, as in Sichuan when the earthquake brought numerous schools that were unsafely built because officials were on the take. [See Archives for my review of No. 50. 5: WILL THE BOAT SINK THE WATER?, by Chen Guidi & Wu Chuntao (2006) 5.31.200]. But it is not just China; it’s pretty much everywhere.
Corruption is what happens when systems are unbalanced. It’s how the people on top stay on top, and it’s how the people at the bottom have to pay up to keep from falling completely through the bottom. It rots a country.
Americans do not believe—although they are coming around—that they have a corrupted country. The people at the bottom are excepted from this view. They understand that they are being screwed. Want an example. How about drugs. The people at the top can afford he more expensive drugs, like cocaine. Well, according to Federal drug possession penalties you have to be caught carrying 5kg (11 pounds) of it to get the same penalty that someone carrying 50grams (1.76 ounces) of cheaper crack cocaine. Your average Wall Street or CEO snorter does not carry eleven pounds of coke around with him; so is there any wonder that our prisons are chock full of poor black sand latinos doing “not less than ten years . . . not more than life” for one and three quarter ounces of their stuff. Fourteenth Amendment, my sweet bootie! Hey, and prisons are good business, too. Drug War Facts reports that, in 2007, for example, 872,720 Americans were arrested for marijuana offenses: 97,583 for trafficking and sale; 775,137 for mere possession. That’s what we are spending enormous amounts of our tax money on—arrest, conviction and incarceration of these people, rather than rapists or terrorists, etc. Of course, busting stoners is easy and fun. But, most Americans do not see this as corruption, whatever they see it as. Most are ignorant or approving of it.
But what might be getting Americans more aware of our corruption is the exposure of the economic meltdown ignited by the Bush/Wall Street nexus. There is perhaps no better (to me at least) illustration of how corrupt we have become than in the machinations of the last days of the Bush administration of Henry Paulson and the $350 billion bailout. This is American taxpayer money that went to failed banks and financial institutions with almost no oversight or conditions, and for which there is virtually no positive discernable economic impact. However, billions of this money as been allocated to the maintenance of astronomical CEO salaries and bonuses paid to top level administrators—the very people whose incompetence, greed and shady dealings have ruined their financial institutions and the national economy, and trigger world wide recession. These are the people who lobbied for de-regulation and tax cuts for their businesses. But we don’t get to the real “gotcha,” the corruption of the American system, until we see that the American taxpayer bailout money gets re-cycled into the lobbyist and political contribution “system” that really runs the country, to militate against unions, regulations and controls, and push for more tax cuts and less oversight, in other words, more of the same. If you watched the Republican debate and vote on the Economic Stimulus legislation you can be assured that much of Congress has already been corrupted.
So if our scared Capitalism is so corrupted how about the two other legs of the three-legged stool of Christianity and the Constitution. While this nation is founded on principles that are related to Christ’s regard and respect for the individual and for the equality of mankind that also influenced Enlightenment philosophy, American evangelical Christianity is a sick joke, perverted and corrupted to give divine approval of greed and intolerance, and demonstrative of it in the disgusting blatant materialism of the money-grubbing prayboys that operate it. American Catholicism can’t, or won’t control the perversions of their predatory priests. This is Christianity that would make Christ puke.
Which leaves the Constitution, the document that defines American Democracy. Wile the document itself has not been corrupted, it has been treated like toilet paper by the Bush Administration. The balance of power between the branches of government has been upset by the arrogation of power to the executive to declare war (with a separate “off the books” budget that loses and squanders untold billions on mercenaries, bribes, and sweetheart deals for favored contractors); the perversion of the Military and Department of Justice allow torture, rendition and illegal surveillance of both Americans and foreign alleged terrorists and combatants, to ignore Congress through the use of “signing statements,” and to stack the Supreme Court with right-wing ideologues who corrupt the interpretation of the document through conforming it to an ideology that gives undue influence to religious organizations and lobbyists that have tripled in number, and diminishes the rights of women and workers.
It is yet to be seen whether America has made a move that can right itself, or whether the degree to which economic class, special interest and ideological have so insidiously corrupted our “system” requires the equivalent of another American Revolution—one that will have to throw more than some tea in the harbor.
[Next: More doo-doo, part deux]
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© 2009, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 2.7.2009)