I never thought I’d see the day when white middle-class America got angry enough to hurl a brick through the windows of their own neighborhoods, but the last few days have brought them close to the next best thing.  America at large realized last week that their bank accounts and pension funds had been worked over as thoroughly as Rodney King ever was, and by experts.  Told that the financial system was about to burst into flames, a lot of sober, sane middle-class taxpayers took a good hard look at Hank Paulson and said “Burn, Baby, Burn!”

 

It says a lot about the Bush Administration that they have managed to so destroy Americans’ trust in Government that people would rather go eyeball to eyeball with a global recession than put themselves on the receiving end of yet another high-class heist.    This bailout has all the classic elements we’ve come to expect from George W. Bush: the foxy Hank Paulson guarding the henhouse of our economy, the threats of dire consequences if we don’t immediately comply, the Democrats rolling over yet again.  To add insult to injury, a lot of the sanctimonious politicians bleating about saving Main Street, not Wall Street, were the same Big Business-friendly blockheads that had given people like Paulson the latitude to work their Ponzi schemes in the first place.  Is it any wonder that the more the politicians begged for a bailout, the more enraged Americans became?

 

Of course, it wasn’t Wall Street titans that bought McMansions they couldn’t afford or signed mortgages that exploded in their faces.  The difference is that Paulson and his pals have already stashed their millions in the bank, while the folks at the bottom of the formerly-profitable debt pyramid are looking at eviction notices.  The blame goes far and wide, and if the economy crumbles, there’ll be enough pox for everybody’s house.  It’s what comes afterwards that worries me.

 

People often ask me if I think the United States could descend into the world of death squads and urban guerrillas portrayed in The Army of the Republic.  All I can say is, given a severe economic downturn, all the ingredients are present: An embittered populace whose hopes have been dashed, a powerful elite with access to heavily-armed private security firms like Blackwater, a propaganda apparatus that relentlessly preaches contempt for Liberals and Government.  Since Newt Gingrich proclaimed the culture wars in the mid-90’s, the metaphors of war and treason have been pumped into the mainstream by Right Wing media and some clergy.  The Left, also, alludes to an internal enemy of Neo-Cons and Republican saboteurs, moving, on its extreme fringes, to shadowy murmurings of a world Jewish conspiracy (the polite word is now “Zionist”).  If this economy comes tumbling down, don’t expect Rush Limbaugh to suddenly start telling the truth, or for Right Wing deregulators to come forward and apologize for helping Bush and his cronies loot the country.  Look for more lies, deeper anger, and, perhaps in some quarters, a call for direct action against the Other Side, the ones that stabbed Us in the back.

 

At that point, the phrase Burn, Baby Burn might seem almost quaint.