Outrage Is Easy.....

....It’s What Got Us into this Mess in the First Place.

You May Be Too Young to Remember, but when the anti-Conformist message of the Beatniks became the anti-War, anti-Establishment, free-love revolution of the 1960s, mainstream America freaked out.

Then, When Lyndon Johnson’s Efforts both to sustain the Vietnam War and to rid America of racism and poverty proved to be too much, the result was social mayhem coupled with economic mess. Johnson’s overreaching ambitions led to Richard Nixon’s cynicism, which led to oil shortages and inflation during the Jimmy Carter years.

The Result Was Outrage, festered by Nixon’s creation of a “Silent Majority” and the fear that the nation had gone off-track. The apex came when Iran held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, aiding the election of the next American president.

America Was Outraged—by the Hippies, by the Commies, by drug use and the sexual revolution, by OPEC and the hostage crisis in Iran. By the apparent failure of the Federal government to take constructive action on any one of these fronts.

In Stepped Ronald Reagan, famously putting forward a silly, defeatist assertion:

“Government Is Not the Solution to Our Problem; Government Is the Problem,” said President Ronald Reagan on the event of his first inauguration. And America believed it. We were outraged by the idea that government might possibly solve anything, beyond the necessities of defending our national borders.

And So Began America’s Twenty-Eight-Year Descent into the folly of deregulation. The result of which we see today.

The “Folly” Fulfilled in the American Taxpayer, unemployed and homeless. Woefully broke, his retirement savings decimated. Providing billions of non-existent dollars to A.I.G. for bankruptcy-inducing bonuses.

What Does America Say Now? That “government is not the solution to the problem”? Or that government just isn’t acting fast-enough to reverse the dismantling trend of almost three entire decades?

Or Merely That We Americans Are....

....Outraged?

If “Government Is not the Solution,” then what will get us out of this mess?

The Failure of American Government over twenty-eight years of the “Conservative Era” was not because government cannot work. It happened because we Americans believed the Conservative foolishness. We elected people who denied the possibilities of government. We permitted our elected officials not even to try. We elected to government, people who bragged —that they don't know how government works!

We Believed the Conservative Ideology—that shipping jobs overseas to Third World countries somehow would not lower our standard of living to that of India, China, and Taiwan. That a nation dependent on foreign oil would not also become dependent on foreign manufacturing and outsourced customer service.

We Believed the Conservative Ideology—that deregulating the greed of Wall Street banks, insurance companies, and investment houses would somehow put money into our pockets. Not just into the million-dollar salaries of CEOs, and the million-dollar bonuses of upper-level management.

We Believed the Conservative Ideology—that deregulating utilities and insurance companies, while putting constraints on the rights of Americans to sue negligent businesses or to declare bankruptcy when necessary, would somehow enhance “individual responsibility” and reduce the “moral hazard” that entitles everyday Americans to the kinds of benefits enjoyed at the top of America’s deregulated economy.

We Believed That If We Just Got Government Out of the Way, private industry would restore America to its former greatness.

Now, What Remains Is Outrage, and the Relentless Heckling of the Right—such as that of Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and talk-show host Rush Limbaugh of Excellence In Broadcasting, and Chairman Michael Steele of the Republican National Committee—voicing their messages of outrage, ever-hopeful that Americans may join in their outrage. And that the anti-ideological principles of sound government will fail.

Against the Fervent American Ideal of Progress, “Hope” and “Change,” we have the Republican determination for a return to the foolish ideological polices of the past twenty-eight years.

What We Have Is the Loud, Republican Remnants of an ideology too-stupid to believe.

And the Practiced Outrage of the American People, tired of being deceived.

But Seriously, Folks: Who’s "Really" to Blame for This Mess?

[The following presentation comes from The Open-Eyed Voter™]

Whether We Will Admit it or Not, most Americans don’t know which side is really most-responsible for the current economic meltdown. And most Americans—whether Republican or Democrat—gladly blame the other side—whichever party we each consider “the other side” to be.

But From a Distance, It’s Not Really Possible for the independent voter to tell who is telling more of which truth. Is it the Democrats? The Republicans? Does either really know how it got this way?

The Open-Eyed Voter™ Does Not. But here is our best effort at figuring it out, as objectively as we can manage:

In the First Place, the Democrats insisted that the opportunity of home-ownership be opened up to all Americans, even to those who couldn’t afford it.

Then, the Republicans Took this Mandate of universal home-ownership, and decided that they’d show the Democrats how foolish this idea was. They created mortgages, which almost anybody could qualify for, that were step-up adjustable-rate mortgages. These mortgages would start low to qualify lower-income buyers, but then jump up to high rates that the borrowers could not realistically manage.

The Combined Result: Too Many People bought houses that they couldn’t afford—at interest rates that they couldn’t afford—while lacking the money-management skills necessary to keep up with their payments.

Next, the Glass-Steagall Act Was Removed. This Depression-era provision kept commercial banks and investment banks separate. Into the breach, mortgages brokers set themselves up in the new territory between commercial banks and investment banks. No one noticed that the gap existed. Too many risky mortgages got written. These risky mortgages were then resold as if they were the old-fashioned kind: solid and dependable. And the rest, as they say, is the current economic crisis.

In the De-Regulatory Economic Climate that has prevailed in America over the past 28 years, the path to this disaster was inevitable. Between the Democratic effort to mandate equality of opportunity and the Republican effort to profit from the presumed equality of individual responsibility, the whole financial system was brought to the brink.

It Would Be Constructive to Hear Barack Obama and John McCain each respond to a narrative such as that preceding, and to hear each identify what genuine blame lies within their respective parties. Now, that would be putting “Country First.”

Right Now, No Matter Who Is to Blame, we are ready for the “Hope” and the “Change” necessary to really get us out of this mess