No matter how bad you think things are, they're actually worse

"We find ourselves trapped on a dark and nasty merry-go-round. One that keeps going faster and faster to the point where everyone is too terrified to jump off."
-- JOE BAGEANT

I admire truth tellers, even if it seems like the best of them always die young.

And I'm sort of tired of folks on one side or the other -- and I include myself in this -- who keep yelling as they try and convince folks that their way is the best.

If Republicans have proved one thing in the last seven years, it's that when they are not in power, they are going to do everything they can to prevent the other side from governing at all.

At all.

I'm not just talking about blocking so-called "Socialist" programs. I'm talking about blocking or slowing down every single appointment that needs to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Think about that. Routine jobs, undersecretaries, assistants to the assistants ... if they need Senate confirmation, Republicans are turning it into root canal surgery.

They have filibustered appointments that then pass 96-0, all with the purpose of grinding the government to a halt.


Think about what they're saying:

If we're not in charge, we're going to make sure nothing gets accomplished.

The Democrats are a little better. The most egregiously awful Supreme Court justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, wouldn't be on the bench without Democratic votes. And early in George W. Bush's term, Democrats co-operated with him on numerous things.

The problem with both parties, though, is that both have acquiesced in creating a major segment of our economy out of something that doesn't really exist. The financial sector traditionally has been about 9 percent of GDP, but as Bageant wrote in 2010 in his brilliant "Dancing at the Doomsday Ball," not only is that number now 40 percent, there is an almost unbelievable amount of bad paper out there which will never be good.

They're called derivatives, and what they amount to is other financial instruments (mortgages, for example) bundled into a larger amount and resold. Folks have been making a fuss about the incredible size of our national debt (closing in on $19 trillion), but the one number that rarely gets mentioned is much scarier.

Toxic derivatives?

$1.4 quadrillion.

In case you're wondering, a quadrillion is $1,000 trillion, so the amount of toxic derivatives is about $1,400 trillion.

You want an even scarier number?

According to Credit Suisse, the total amount of wealth in the entire world in 2013 was $241 trillion.

When you look at those numbers, at least in one respect, government hardly matters anymore. Both parties are so deeply in the pockets of the moneyed interests that nothing gets done that corporate America doesn't want done.

As for average folks, well, people have become accustomed to struggling for so long now that they don't really expect anything more.

The only mistake that has been made that truly affects some people is George W. Bush's War of Terror, which has killed a lot of average kids from average families and has sent a lot of National Guardsmen (and women) somewhere they never expected to go when they signed up for the Guard.

Idealists on both sides want to take things back to a simpler time, but the people pulling the strings won't ever let go, and our short national attention span isn't designed for long-haul struggles.

We're an out-of-control train hurtling down a mountain railway, and the brakes were stripped a long time ago. Even the little pig who built his house out of bricks is going to have to go feral to survive.

When the history of this period is written, they'll look at the two kinds of people who made things worse -- the ones on the left who kept asking the government to do more and more, and the ones on the right who kept telling the government to leave them alone.

On June 6, 1944, thousands of young American men from all parts of the social stratum waded ashore in northern France. The first wave took more than 90 percent casualties, but more important, the guys in the first wave knew that they were almost certainly going to die to make things easier for the guys who would follow them.

Can you imagine us trying to do something like that in 2010? I sure can't. You'd have guys calling their lawyers to get them transferred out, or faking illnesses or homosexuality to avoid losing their own life for a greater cause.

There are a lot of people -- conservatives mostly -- who look at our government and say the Founding Fathers would be appalled by what their dream had become. I think they would look at us -- at least 98 percent of us -- and be appalled by the people who are calling themselves Americans in 2010.

If we're not selfish, we're lazy.

If we're not lazy, we're ignorant.

And worst of all, we don't have a clue about what is happening in the world. A lot of people here complain about some vague "New World Order" and say we need to avoid it and hang onto our sovereignty.

Folks, that train has left the station. Tens of millions of Americans are unemployed, underemployed or working for a lot less money than they ever have before.

No matter what you grew up wanting to do or learning to do, there's a pretty good chance some guy in Bangalore is doing it now.

Walt Kelly said it first. We have met the enemy and it is us. We're selfish, lazy and ignorant. We sold our heritage for a mess of pottage, and it's going to be a lot harder to get back than it was to find the first time.

I'm not even sure it's possible, given the sophistication of the way the elites are able to manipulate us.

Republicans aren't the problem. Democrats aren't the problem.

Figuratively, at least, the best thing we could do for ourselves is to march on Wall Street and burn it to the ground. Then we could follow it up by going house to house and destroying every television we could find.

After all, without TV, we might have to actually talk to each other. Then we might see that we're not so different after all.

Imagine that.