On 2008 (A Toxic 'Eureka!' Moment?) - January 6, 2009

Welcome to Costco, I love you.
- Store Greeter, Idiocracy (2006)

Were that we could kill it, erase the goddamn thing. Wipe the year from calendars and banish its every memory, every single rotten moment. We can't though, we know; someone would remember. And 2008 will linger, longer than most of the rest, a low water mark in history, where we finally Hit the Wall.

But the crashes, the failures, the exposures of our shared, fantastic ridiculousness... these won't be the story, because this is not an end. Not for the American Way, or this "American Era" the pundits have been citing. No, the story of this year - its perversely empowering truth - has nothing to do with conclusions. The lesson of 2008 will be our stunning collective epiphany that everything can fall to shit - the foolproof structures fail, the doomsday predictions turn real - and things will pretty much stay the same.¹ At least the immediate comforts, all that matters to us.

It started wrong, of course, like every election year. From January to November, the idiot sniping of "mavericks," the endless masturbation of "hope"... The mindless, spineless narratives and all the "belief in belief" - those legions of "Joe the Plumbers" and the Fiercely, Furiously Urgent. And all that impenetrable spin - the conniving, maneuvering and massaging of language - the televised reminders of our basic venal character, how quickly we're brought rabid by native lust for power. And left behind it all, armies of the easily converted, certain How Right They Are, of Where We Need to Go, whipped to the predictable zealotry by the shiniest of marketing spectacles.

But the election was only half of it. And the other was so much scarier - broader, deeper and a thousand times more ominous than any of the poisons of politics. We sat and watched paralyzed as Bear and Lehman collapsed, as the wizards at AIG and every Quant-farm of idiot savants believing some magical slop of Fermatic constructions could eradicate the risk in millions of liar's loans vaporized Wall Street into economic anti-matter - a black hole sucking money from the Fed as fast as they could print it, ship it and dump it into the abyss. "Ever flush too much Charmin down your toilet, Hank? If we dump enough into this thing, eventually the fucker will clog. The whirlpool'll stop sucking." "Whatever you say, Ben... I'm out of here come January."²

And if all this weren't enough, Detroit gave us a parting surprise - a sandpaper reach-around just as we were pulling up our trousers. "Hey, remember us? The guys who build those awful Buick crossovers and Pontiac sport-coupes that look like pregnant rollerskates? The chromed-up Cadillac corpse carriages your grandparents drive around Boca and those five mile-per-gallon Hummers? Yeah, us. The guys who build the tin can rental cars you only drive on vacation and pay our line workers more than our auditors. We need $30 billion, or we're going to implode, too... start another black hole in Michigan."

And what was the long-term solution? Other than Audacity, or another trillion in tax cuts?

"Stimulus," of course. A case of Dewars for the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I know, I know... It's needed. We can't go cold turkey here. Sudden austerity would throw us into seizures, tear at the seams of the social fabric of the country. But that's what's so utterly maddening. We talk about it coolly, in abstract, scholarly terms. Call it "deficit spending," cite precedent to be profligate. "FDR did it!" "Reagan did it!" "We need a New New Deal!" That's true, I guess, on a macro level rational. But make no mistake on this "prudence" - it only sounds wise because we've lost our fucking minds. A bizarro therapy for a bizarro economy: Borrowing and printing trillions, preserving the unsustainable at the high and harrowing risk of a gruesome reckoning later. The biggest bridge loan in history, to the hope of future bubbles big enough to offset its service.

Sounds like sheer insanity, but I know and so do you - and your neighbor, the mailman, your Prozac-comatosed stepmother in Prada thong underwear - we all know this: Something will come along and save us, buy us another decade. A war with a new rogue nation, a cure for baldness or ass fat... robots you can fuck. Given enough time, that's always the inevitable course.³ This is just a trough, a dip in our lunatic cycle - a hundred million madmen loaded on envy and angst, chasing glittering totems, baited by the smarter and shrewder. Get out there on the track. Catch the plastic rabbit. The cure seems insane, but it's only consistent with the malady.

The modern American Dream is ludicrous, arrogant and childish, built on illogic and faith, mysticism and ignorance - the notion will trumps data, narrative bests reality. 2008 was a flashpoint, a rare clarifying moment where our Ponzi society shuddered, teetered and all but cracked to pieces. We gasped like we were surprised, pretended we were disgusted, pointed the finger elsewhere and called for heads to roll.

And yet it'll all persist. We'll get up tomorrow and no matter the numbers on the ticker, the frowns on the talking heads, or the bleak headlines in the papers, We'll Still Believe. We'll believe we're each exceptional, damn that it's impossible. We'll believe we're all entitled, forget the vanishing margins. We'll believe we deserve what we have, and most of what we want. We'll be certain most of our failures are somehow the system's fault, and that the new guy in charge had better fix things fast - yesterday, or sooner. And if he doesn't, or he can't - if he tells us we're to blame, that we expect too much - we'll scream that he's a failure, that our government owes us Better. We're Americans, goddamnit.

People say we're out of money, but they miss the point. They say we'll find some depth, but they don't know our kind. We're resilient, recidivist, and the prices will drop to meet us. The banks have to lend to profit, and not just to the worthy. And where else is the world going to sell all its exotic, klassy shit?

Some of us will crash, mainly on the fringes. But they'll be the sad exceptions, while most of us live out the rule - that tomorrow'll look like yesterday, which was a lot like the same day last year, the year before that and ten and twenty prior. Not as indulgent, sure, but hardly a crushing downgrade.

Most of us will get up in the morning, the way we always do. Throw our alligator wallets in our Fendi purses, hop in the driver's seats of BMW trucks and head to Whole Foods, to pick up organic milk and free range eggs. Well get our manicures, pedicures and nose jobs, botox, peels and Japanese seaweed facials. We'll hire trainers to teach us push-ups, wire our silly kids on Ritalin and pay immigrants to walk our dogs. But it won't all stay gravy... We'll offset the cost of our lattes with cheap chardonnay at dinner.

Some of us will wake at eleven, gas up the Navigator and head for Sam's Club. Get a Chinese plasma screen for the double wide and a fistful of Playstation games. Pick up some Nickelback tickets, a copy of The Secret and a Mission Impossible Boxed Set, Platinum Edition. With a Blue Ray player, of course, to watch it in the proper definition. Realize too late, at home unpacking the truck, we forgot to pick up condoms. Fuck it... Can't knock her up twice in two years. That's unpossible.

We'll borrow and spend through deflation, while everything looks like a deal. And we'll spend through the following inflation, betting on a long term recovery. And I'd like to offer a reason, something simple and easily cured. That it stems from a common neurosis - lack of confidence, meaning or worth. If only the fix were so easy. But no diagnosis suffices. The illness includes them all, parts of an incredible whole. And the only label that fits is that inside handshake description - what we know from one to another, but can never clearly explain: We're Americans, goddamnit... Consuming's what we do.

And we don't do much else, at least not that I can see (or at least not nearly as well). Which is why I can't get frantic, or think much will really change. If the easy money vanished for good, we wouldn't be left with a country, let alone an economy. And that's not going to happen. The biggest concern from this year isn't what comes tomorrow, how much further things sag. The worry is how many people were paying close attention... How many just stumbled into a dangerous realization: "Stupid alone you crash, stupid in staggering numbers, nothing radically changes. You might have to drink domestics for a while, cut back on take out sushi, but Uncle Sam'll eventually step in and wipe out all the big losses, re-set the game."

If Wall Street's too big to fail, and Main Street's a thousand Wall Streets, then... The algebra isn't difficult, even for most Americans. And that's a toxic 'Eureka!' moment right there.
_________

¹ Some call this "moral hazard," but that's an intentional thing, and barely the cusp of the problem. The bigger issue is "unionized stupidity" - the power of shared, simultaneous idiocy, most of it earnest, some a pretext for avarice. In either case, broad recognition that if enough people make awful decisions together, the individual pain of loss is blunted, spread in minor increments over the whole of society

² Having profited exceptionally from his two years of service. See, A Tax Rule Could Save Treasury Nominee Millions

³ The only fright's in the waiting, wondering how long we can last in those years in between.

Posted by PhilaLawyer at 12:50 PM

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Comments

You're surely not the first to say it, probably not the best, and definitely not the last. But until we truly can't have it, in the most concrete and crushing sense of the idea, Americans will be writing (emphasis: writing) about this mindless stat quo consumption for years to come. If we still exist.

PL: I don't think we ever can't have it. I could take this one step further and suggest a free market's either unfettered or not a market at all, and that we're living in the staged narrative of something we pretend to worship don't have the balls to embrace. Save the spectacular flame-outs and those with no resources at all, I don't think we'll ever reach a moment where we won't have it, or at least 75% of it (which is about 10% more of it than we

need, really). There really isn't any alternative.

Terrible logic, it seems, but only when you assume realities craft the way this nation evolves more than this nation crafts the internal realities in which its residents exist, and on which they base their economic decisions. But that gets into a debate on the role of the state, which is beyond me. Suffice it to say, we're moving into a time where the state will attempt to craft a micro economic reality internally for its citizens which will be at odds with the actual economic reality and the global economic reality. A soft isolationism.

Writing's an apt response to this subject, as the idea we can do anything concrete to really cure or address the problem requires a retooling of the pathology at its base, and that's not happening.

I figured a poem in the form of an editorial was the best reply. Seemed about right.

Posted by: TSKosnik at January 8, 2009 12:42 PM

Fuck yes! I'm not sure how you are able to distill a majority of the culture's problems in such a short piece, but I guess that's why you are the voice of a generation.

I don't understand how the New New Deal is going to work. Where are the workers who are going to build all these public works? America's workforce has gone soft and flabby from generations spent under flourescent lights. Who can still pick up a shovel with the crippling carpal tunnel developed from years typing away in a cramped cubicle? Not to mention the dearth of skilled tradesmen. A thousand hours of Xbox doesn't mean you can handle the controls of a bulldozer or front-end loader. Perhaps the solution would be to throw open the borders and let enter a wave of immigrants willing to do our dirty work for low pay while we continue to prop up the great class of middle managers to supervise them all? And auditors to supervise the managers? So we can create the bubble anew?

PL: The who isn't as difficult as you might think. The contracts will necessarily go to certain massive corporations which can take on the size of the projects proposed. Don't be surprised if you see Kellogg Brown & Root and Bechtel shifting workforces from Iraq back to the states in the next few years as one trough dries and another is filled.

A large percentage of the spending, however, will be burned up in regulatory and compliance programs. People will not want to see a repeat of the lax oversight and profiteering (some perceived, some real) in Iraq. This will be a gilded welfare program for the administrators in the agencies charged with implementation and the "interface" economy (the ex-govt employees who will guide the new beneficiaries of the corporate spending to through the contracting process). Lawyers, accountants and compliance experts in those arenas will make nice coin, some of it warranted, but a lot of it an unnecessary, facilitated by extraneous speed-bumps these people will build into the system for job-justification purposes. If I had to guess, 10% of the spending will be wasted on white collar redundancies who'll find a way to suckle from the thing - impossible to eliminate because they'll be viewed as necessary evils in a "regulatory" climate no one will question in the post-greed, post-Wall Street, The-Free-Market-Is-Evil climate.

Who the corporations doing all the actual physical work will employ is an interesting question. That leads into an interesting question about the real goal of the project. Is it to employ as many as possible or is it to create the most quality infrastructure for the govt's buck? Those two results are not exactly compatible.

Posted by: K at January 8, 2009 03:10 PM

As long as you avoid Coors, drinking domestics is a reasonable way to cope, although how "domestic" does budweiser remain? Do you think a lot of people are loyal to budweiser due to familiarity (same can and similar clydesdale marketing for generations)? Does it really just taste better? Probably a blend of the two.

Another thing worth talking about, along with booze, is music. I wanted to get a feeling of where you stand on a lot of 90's music. You don't mention a lot of it specifically besides Jane's Addiction and the Pumpkins. How do you feel about the other popular bands (Pearl Jam, AIC, etc)?

PL: I think for a lot of people Bud is a default drink. It's easy and everybody knows how it tastes. I actually love Budweiser out of 12 oz cans. I hate it from bottles. Can't figure out why. Something about the sweetness of it coming from glass.

With you on hating Coors. Coors Light is absolute piss. If you must drink light, Bud, Miller and Amstel Light beat it by miles. The only thing worse than it might be Heineken Light, which might as well be seltzer.

I think some other people are drawn to a stylized Americana thing Bud is roped into, a sort of "I drink Bud, and it's good, and that's my statement as the kind of guy who takes stands" sort of thing. That's goofy, but I think some folks go in for the faux ruggedness or Integrity of the product. Marketing, etc...

Pound for pound, Pearl Jam has been one of the country's finest rock bands of the last decade. Vedder wanted to be the next Who, and though he hasn't and won't reach that pinnacle, he's done a fine job of putting out some of the best thinking man's guitar rock of any band in his time.

AIC is over-produced, but "Dirt" is a classic, and the harmony those guys had in the vocals was amazing. My favorite grunge band, however, would have to be Soundgarden. "Badmotorfinger" is an all time favorite, "Searching (With My Good Eye Closed)" the best cut on it.

Posted by: steve at January 8, 2009 03:43 PM

Any thoughts on the rudius post with the link to the porn industry seeking a 5 billion dollar bailout?

PL: No bailout is warranted. Doomed business model.

Has anyone with a brain paid for porn since, say, 1999?

Posted by: Garnz at January 9, 2009 01:16 AM

We're always just one bubble away from reform and fiscal responsibility.

PL: Nothing to add there.

Posted by: clb at January 10, 2009 05:32 PM

The worst year in my 25 years of existence. The worst President to grace the American soil, the low point in my personal life. Nothing but despair, alcohol, drugs and 2 bit whores who don't care less. And being separated from my friends and family and living in the shit hole called the U.K for the last 6 months. God bless me. Amen.

p.s: you should change the software so I can't copy and past the word "philalawyer" into the box.

PL: Why? You want to quit everything cold turkey?

Posted by: iamthegreatestdriver at January 12, 2009 02:09 PM

Portable. DVD. Players.

PL: Cite?

Posted by: keith at January 12, 2009 11:08 PM

"A thousand hours of Xbox doesn't mean you can handle the controls of a bulldozer or front-end loader."

This goes along with PL's line about pressing the reset button as if this is one big Madden game and "the computer's cheating" to prevent you from winning. Then again when we as a society egregiously overpay people who sit in front of computers shorting stocks and speculating elsewhere in one big guessing game of legalized gambling, do we wonder why so many think it's just a video game to be reset after all?

And on this:
"how "domestic" does budweiser remain?"

Where was this question in the Presidential debates?
"Senator, Budweiser - a company that has celebrated patriotism and America in its ubiquitous advertising - has been bought by the Belgian-Brazilian company InBev. Likewise, the Chrysler Building - a structure that is featured in movies, TV shows, and pictures as a staple of the skyline one of the most popular US cities, New York - was sold to the Abu Dhabi Investment Council - a Middle Eastern fund.
Since this is happening to even iconic American institutions, did Communist Russia founder Vladmir Lenin have a point that we should heed caution to when he said, 'We are going to hang the last capitalist with the rope that he sold to us.'?"

PL: Well, Lenin hasn't had much gravitas since 1989, and right now, as I think someone else pointed out, Russia, not us, was forced to shut down its stock market for a few days in this mess.

I tend to look at the bright side of foreign investment in this country - that although a lot of it derives from bargain hunting, it still evidences a belief in our long term stability.

As to Americans rediscovering manual labor, the market will force a number of them into it. As the numbers begin to look rosier, a picture of stability will inevitably emerge a few years down the road and slowly, surely, credit will incrementally thaw (as its beginning to do) and the treadmill will spin slowly. At some point a bubble will emerge and the process will repeat.

Posted by: Evil Conservative at January 13, 2009 11:07 AM

Hey man, came across this in regards to a recent post of yours: http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/centralia/

Enjoy!

PL: Perfect. Much better photos.

Posted by: roofus at January 13, 2009 11:07 PM

Nicely done. I wondered when you'd get to this. The "Prozac-comatosed stepmother in Prada thong underwear" line was, for me, the pinnacle of the piece - you've summed up an entire generation in one sentence.

American protectionism is a funny thing, I think, because historically there's never been a good reason for it. Outsourcing parts of the military to American companies has done far more damage than any foreign involvement in the private sector, and in any case, if standard of living is to be maintained it's crucial to keep foreign capital coming in.

But the thing about the MICEX closings is this: Russians are always ready to withdraw all their money from banks (in euro or dollars, NOT rubles) the minute things start to look bad. The closings were all followed by major injections of cash into the markets by the state, and Putin & Co. did a pretty decent job of limiting the fallout in comparison with other emerging markets. They didn't even need to do anything like, say, temporarily ban short selling to keep the bottom from falling out of the market...now how about that?

PL: Thank you. On the Russian market observation, can I just say "uncle"?

Posted by: Vladimir Zhirinovsky at January 14, 2009 05:07 PM

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years."

Alexander Fraser Tytler

PL: I believe there are a number of Krakatoa-level volcanoes that are supposed to have gone off in the past century based on historical cycles.

Posted by: Henry Warmoth at January 14, 2009 10:27 PM

You know how they say that every line of Dylan's "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" is like the start of a whole new song? Well I feel that this is your "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" because each sentence in here could be an article by itself.

That's as high of praise as I've got to give.

PL: There can be no higher comparison, in my opinion. I assume you own the scattered, frantic version of that song on the "Live 1975 Rolling Thunder Review" record.

If you don't, you should. It's hardly Dylan's greatest live record ("Live 1966" is, I think), but man, do they shred through that tune.

Thanks for that gratifying comparison, and recognizing what I was trying to do there.

Posted by: K. at January 15, 2009 02:07 AM