Bankruptocracy

We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.
-Ike Eisenhower

As I write this, shockwaves from the financial tailspin are reverberating in Asia, and the US stock market has continued its precipitous decline. It appears the emergency measures enacted by the federal government to "stanch" the flow of capital from shaken markets have failed to inspire confidence among investors and institutions. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his predecessor Alan Greenspan are AWOL and we are left with a former Goldman Sachs CEO pleading on his knees for full license to disperse nearly a trillion dollars to the same financial elites that helped precipitate the crisis. Despite including a few baby carrots for their confused and angry constituents, legislators gave President Bush and Secretary Paulson the wide latitude they sought, and the public have been asked to make good on the debt payments.

The outrage is palpable on all sides of the political spectrum, yet is subdued by a collective sense of learned helplessness. The members of the two-party duopoly, which the majority of Americans have entrusted to safeguard their prosperity and security, have failed in their mission, ostensibly distracted by their efforts to portray the other party as out of touch and as petty partisan hacks. People openly wonder why the average citizen, facing budget cuts, foreclosure, poverty and even homelessness is not bailed out. Questionable ties to financial sector lobbyists abound in the news media, despite presidential candidates' claims to be inured to their influence. Yet somehow, voters feel even more locked into the lesser of two evils argument as they consider their dueling options for the November election.

The two-party system truly has been running on fear for some time, a fear that one or the other party will cause us to slip from dominance and render our cherished lifestyles untenable. This fear has led us into global environmental degradation, numerous intractable armed conflicts, unholy alliances with brutal regimes, astronomical expenditures on advanced weaponry and defense systems, domestic spying and torture in the name of security, and massive subsidies to a corporate power structure that has no internal modus operandi of serving the public good.

I wonder whether the current state of panic will miraculously replace fear as the motor of our stalled-out economic growth, in a twisted fantasy of Friedmanites (Milton, not Thomas) who long for widespread confusion and disaster to ram through unobstructed the structural adjustments to what they see as the welfare state embodied in the embalmed corpse of FDR's New Deals. The crisis itself thankfully puts in stark relief the false dualism that has long existed in the modern collective consciousness between socialism and capitalism, allegedly the only forms of civilized society remaining after tyranny has been bottled up:

On one hand, we see a communist heavyweight, China, completely tied into a global deregulated neoliberal economy, unable to improve the average quality of life for its citizens without cutting workplace standards and introducing a class system into the social fabric. On the other, we see a dominant capitalist socio-economic Empire scrambling to intervene in the markets, with the US and Britain now openly considering partially nationalizing banks. In short, we may be witnessing the bankruptcy of this ideology of division. We increasingly see a broad continuum of community, of humanitarianism with all the worn labels peeling off.

Assuming the most dire predictions of a new global Great Depression come true, what are we left with? Will we still listen to the pundits and politicians squabble over soundbites with the same interest? Will we tussle over the differences in our values on religion, homosexuality, abortion, and stem cell research with the same fervor? Will we remain convinced that we must support trillion dollar occupations in order to deny a small network of enemies the ability to claim a Pyhrric victory (while they watch the economic system collapse entirely)?

If political and economic capital are depleted to the point of no return, what will remain if not social capital, the power of our networks and relationships to improve our lives? We may be forced to leave the old paradigm that you are either in the winner's or loser's circle in an inevitable social binary. The problem is making the crossover. We all have networks of friends and family, and many even have online networks of friendly acquaintances and business associates. But when it comes to actually accomplishing your personal goals, ask yourself how reliable your network truly is to you. Without the luxuries of free-flowing communication and transportation, how could your family survive?

The time to start forging and learning how to collaborate in human networks is now, before things get any more catastrophic. Perhaps, for many, it takes a sheer collapse of security to spur the motivation to make the connections that make survival feasible, but it doesn't necessarily need to come to that. The bottom line is what common ground, if any, can you seek out with others? If your answer is "let the government take care of it," or "don't bother me and I won't bother you," then I wish you and your network the best of luck. If your intuition is that this need not be a dog-eat-dog world, and you would prefer dignity and support, collaboration and community, you are not alone.

Nothing comes for free, except the life we are born into. What do you really have to lose?