Open season

This may be all wrong, but it is how I feel right now so I may as well get it down.

Today we witnessed something unprecedented during the American empire: the breakdown of our domestic political authority. Given the interconnectivity of the world economy, we must ask how our global authority now looks to the rest of the world. Do we appear to be a country that can rationally govern itself in times of crisis? Do we look like a country that the rest of the world can trust to lead? We are the architects of global order, and are looked to as such by all who both love and hate us. Yet at a time of mounting global crisis and when American power is already seriously weakened, we have signaled to every potential adversary, ally, and enemy that our place in the pecking order is open for challenge. I am not calling for American hegemony; merely fearing the consequences of a lack of order. Might this fear turn out to be unfounded? It might, but the point is that I don't think any of us know anymore. There comes a point when a signal has been sent; when a scent has been released; and the "invisible hand" of the world know that control has been abdicated. When there is no one in charge, events can quickly lead us to places that were never imagined.

Those who were against the bailout were betting that the genie can be put back in the bottle, that the dogs once loosed will return placidly to the yard. I hope they are right.

But even if we can continue to convince the world that we are tethered to something resembling reality, among us Americans we can admit that things are dangerously off-kilter. Our political leadership has failed to make the hard decisions today; but we must be clear about one thing. Their hand was forced by a public that demanded, DEMANDED! their own downfall. Congressional offices received calls 100 to 1 against the bailout.

Now there were many who had principled and smart objections to the bailout. But if we are honest, we know this is not true of the masses who called their congressional representative for the first time since the last time a significant bipartisan legislation had a chance to pass in the form of comprehensive immigration reform. These voters know little except the politics of temper tantrums; they react only to things that they imagine directly threaten the shiny objects they keep close within their reach.

We will hear the Anderson Coopers of the world decry our failed political establishment; but the rot goes much deeper then that. Reality has been dammed and channeled into a hundred separate canals, each pooling in different directions until conversation between the fish swimming in their respective ponds is impossible. Somehow we Americans have lost all collective and shared memory--of what the lessons of history teach us, of what has happened to past empires (even benevolent ones) that over reach, of what is necessary to build communities fit for human habitation, of anything except the pursuit of those shiny things that occupy our daily attention. Most of all, we have forgotten how easily our delicately structured civilization can fall apart. And we have forgotten that we are not the first people to forget this, and who then had to remember the hard way.