Letter from Slim Wolfe
Politics – December 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
The letter I wrote for November’s issue was apparently stolen by trolls, but I refer readers to Alexander Cockburn’s essay in the November 10 Nation magazine (“Against Obama, www.thenation.com). I shared little of the jubilation of the crowd at Hattie’s as the election results came in.
I threw my vote to Obama as an act of desperation to block the forces behind War Hero McCain: wrapped in glory like a Luftwaffe pilot after the bombing of Guernica, with nobody asking about Nguyen Cae Ky, the despot of South Vietnam propped up by Democrats Kennedy and Johnson, the puppet dictator McCain and his cohorts could not save.
But Obama doesn’t seem to represent my interests, and it’s small consolation that he’s part black and that he may be more inclined to talk to certain world leaders rather than annihilate them.
Internal surveillance and the Patriot Act, hired mercenaries in Iraq and New Orleans, expanding the war into Pakistan, are not in my best interests or in the best interests of this nation; nor is propping up an unworkable economy.
Rather than hiding his campaign behind the meaningless mantra of “change,” he might have discussed these crucial issues in some detail, out of respect for the intelligence of Americans, but maybe I’m a fool to hope that respect for intelligence might win an election. Seems like we ought to have better options than “hope” for “change,” but maybe it’s a good time to exert more pressure. When the high point of the entire campaign is a prank phone call to Palin from a Montreal DJ, you better hope for something.
So I’m still in the position that my nation does not represent my best interests, or the interests of most of its citizens.
It cannot, as long as we cling to the rags-to-riches American dream, and equate money with wealth. Wealth is not our individual bubble propping up other individual bubbles by mere surface tension; wealth is not money generated like electrons by spitting atoms of economy by financial cyclotrons like the futures markets, or mutual funds. Wealth is the collected health, education, welfare, housing and security of the whole people as generated by the labors of same. Money may not be the only medium in which wealth can increase, nor does it seem to be the ideal medium, except in our culture-conditioned thought patterns.
Equating wealth with money has put us on the spot: 99 percent of us are now no more than the tail on the dog of high finance. We might get a little blow-by in the form of a wage increase or a dividend check, but our health, our homes, our jobs, our entire human well-being and security can get sucked into a black hole not of our making at any moment, squeezed into pulp to feed the ones on top.
We should be able to rely on our skills and our energies to give us dignity, not have to gamble for a little extra when the odds are so plainly stacked. If we can’t learn this lesson from history, these problems are bound to recur. The right of the people to derive full benefit from their collective effort must be greater than the right of the speculators to squeeze, or freedom becomes a farce.
Investment for the sake of dividends and interest is, potentially, a realistic way to provide working capital to publicly held corporations and governments, rewarding merit and progress.
What could be a good idea is negated by fluctuating values of shares, which invite the leeches to manipulate for their own ends. Only an economist or a leech could fail to see the potential stability which might arise from fixed-value shares. And what if the big corporations did what mom and dad taught us: put some of their profits aside to cover next year’s expenses, so they didn’t have to borrow until they were in water over their heads?
But we’re so hidebound by the gospel according to Dow and Jones that no Presidential candidate would dare to breach such an idea. What if we all kept our savings and took out our loans from locally owned credit unions which don’t package up their mortgages for resale overseas? That’s a simple thing we individuals can do, regardless of what the economists spout about imminent doom. Ed says, like it or not, we’re stuck with it, but I’m not willing to let my life be defined by big money and little pawns on someone else’s chessboard.
There’s no crisis on Desolation Row, where I live. I have no debt, no investments, no mortgage, and I’ll probably be able to maintain myself on the strength of my labor for some time to come, because my needs are simple. I have buckets of staple foods, closets of work clothes, ratty but practical vehicles, and a house I don’t need to use as a pawn in a real-estate market. The peasant’s dream of meritocracy endures, while the high-falutin’ dreams of leveraged gains collapse.
My Presidential Platform:
No more war, no more NATO, overseas bases, aggression, or aid, no Pentagon, no space program, no paranoid bullying. I ain’t afraid.
A crash program to free us from overconsumption, borrowing and speculation. Health, housing, education, welfare, and useful employment take priority, and justice must be based on that priority.
Recognition that small is beautiful and efficient, and we all can make some small contributions, directly, to our basic human needs.
Non-intervention in the affairs of our neighbors, recreational, sexual, and reproductive freedom in our private lives (but not on public lands with stinky ATVs).
The business of government is to support and provide justice for people first, and commerce, maybe, later.
Once we thought leeching was the preferred treatment for many ailments, now we’ve found better ways and doctors no longer carry jars of leeches. It’s time we rid ourselves of the economic leeches as well.
It may be argued that even the most communist governments have to fall back on economic incentives and private finance, but maybe that’s because the scales are skewed by a world economy primarily dominated by profit and loss rather than by the real wealth of collective well-being.
The notion that Wall Street will work better if it’s totally free and deregulated flies in the face of history. Might as well build a truck with no steering and brakes: rules have evolved for a reason. Our cultural and religious imperatives, such as “lift up the needy” and “do unto others” have also evolved for a reason, but they don’t translate into lending Joe the Plumber the money so he can quit generating real wealth through his labor and become a flabby executive with a tailored suit and a new set of office furniture.
Maybe there’s no crisis in the economy, except in the minds of the economists and the news-mongers. Maybe it’s just a course correction, come out of necessity: no more discretionary income to blow on wasteful and polluting lifestyles. Maybe all this ridiculous prosperity will be tempered to a sustainable level, after the fuss dies down and the grand illusion is cut down to size.
Or maybe the economy is the crisis. Maybe it’s time we stopped invoking our fears of last century’s desperate dictators and took a hard look at more workable ways to share the wealth, not just the money. As yet there’s been no major party candidate with that sort of vision, that sort of plan, and the courage to speak up about it.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove
