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Great Trauma As a Great Teacher: Peering Into the New Year
By Bernard Weiner (about the author) Page 1 of 3 page(s)
For OpEdNews: Bernard Weiner - Writer
Psychiatrists will attest that it is during emotional depression that great strides can be made in radical alteration of behavior and philosophy. Trauma, in other words, can be a great teacher. Everything is stirred-up, topsy-turvy, and thus can rise to the surface and become manifest and workable. In such a tumultuous time, clinical depression can be, and must be, dealt with creatively.
I suspect much is similarly true with great upheavals in the body economic and body politic. One is no longer in a safe, solid groove. The ingredients are there for some extraordinarily inventive and spontaneous activity and thought. (A digressive example: My wife says that some of her favorite moments in the kitchen are when, for one reason or another, she has to put together a full dinner quickly with nothing else but what's in the fridge and pantry. No time to shop, no recipes, just creative meldings and the culinary imagination.)
I'm not suggesting we should consciously try to create recessions and economic depressions to get ourselves into that ultra-creative mode, only that when we are in those states of flux, we open ourselves to the possibility of progressive transformational opportunities. See it as a variation of "shock doctrine" but from the left, this time used for purposes of expanding peace and justice.
The U.S., indeed much of the world, is in such a trauma mode right now, and it's going to get worse, much worse, before it gets even worse, and then it will start to level off and then get better. When? Everyone's speculating. My guess is a minimum of three years before we start to see some consistent light at the end of the economic-meltdown tunnel.
A WHOLE LOT OF PAIN
Why so long? A whole lot of hurt has to work its way through the system. That takes time, and is derived from a whole mess of strands: the housing bubble bursting with even more foreclosures and bankruptcies still to come, the bundling of toxic debt instruments and selling them all over the globe, the lack of available credit, industry after industry downsizing, massive and growing unemployment -- in other words, a perfect, cascading storm of economic awfulness, helped along by a greedy conservative philosophy that the CheneyBush Administration used to justify the removal of virtually all regulation and oversight from the financial system. The result, of course, was to permit, nay encourage, all sorts of shady schemes that eventually blew up in the faces of anyone in the vicinity.
As I've written previously, ( www.crisispapers.org/essays8w/meltdown.htm ) the warning signs for the coming financial tsunami were pointed out more than a year ago by Administration officials, economists, and independent analysts on the internet. But nothing was done. I suspect the Bushites were trying to postpone having to admit and deal with the enormity of the problem, at least until after Inauguration Day, so that the catastrophe could be blamed on the new president since it all fell apart on his watch.
The new President would have to spend every waking hour and all resources on the economic disaster, leaving nothing available for new programs. The result would be the wrecking of any popular momentum and increasing his chances for failure, thus making it easier for the GOP to climb back into the electoral driving seat in 2010 and 2012.
In this light, as we prepare to move into a new calendar dear, it might be useful to examine where we are as a nation and where we might be going.
OBAMA DECISIONS ARE KEY
Virtually everything depends on President Obama's official moves after January 20, 2009. If, as president, he chooses to govern mainly from the middle and middle-right, as his appointments would seem to indicate, he will have squandered his opportunity to effect the positive, major, systemic reforms that the country requires. BandAids are useless when the arterial bleeding is so massive.
For example, Treasury Secretary Paulson, with Congressional approval, has created in the government's financial-bailout program a legalized system of organized looting of the public coffers that may wind up costing several trillions (!) of dollars, all this with no effective oversight.And with loopholes for outrageous executive bonuses big enough to drive trucks through. In short, the giant banking and financial institutions are picking the treasury clean and doing precious little about helping out ordinary homeowners and small-business owners by freeing up the credit system.
If Obama were to leave those programs and adminitrative personnel in place, even temporarily, he would signal that the American public, and the recessionary global economy, can expect little of the major change he promised, just more of the same with a different face. That would be an instant recipe for a quick slide into another Great Depression, much like the U.S. and world experienced in the 1930s.
There's no guarantee we're not headed that way anyway. The perfect-storm ingredients are still heading us toward a full-scale Depression over the next few years. But if certain actions are quickly taken now, it's still possible to mitigate the intensity of that scenario and its resulting suffering for so many. Don't expect any help from the current administration in its final months. Bush has disappeared into a delusional fantasy world of his "positive legacy," and is taking no action other than to permit the organized theft of the treasury to continue essentially unchecked.
www.crisispapers.org
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