Jungle Book

The torrent of economic and political news coming at us from all directions tests the attention span and tolerance levels even of the most avid consumer. One defers to the specialists to piece together a coherent panorama of what is coming next, but given the uncertainties and surprises, there’s no reason to think that even the smartest have a lock on what is happening to us.

I’ve been paralyzed for a week trying to take it all in, but I keep coming back to certain snippets and images. The story, for example, of the ex-Chicago alderman who got five years’ probation for scheming to get a $1.5 million payoff in a real estate deal. The judge let him off without a jail term or even restitution of the scam (he was fined a paltry $50,000) and argued that Edward Vrdolyak’s actions had ‘not cost anyone the loss of money’ in the NY Times paraphrase.

If that’s how things are done in Illinois, it’s no wonder “Senator” Roland Burris can’t understand why people are in his face for playing footsie with Blagojevich. But aside from the notorious habits of the Chicago machine, it’s a startling statement of the thinking that got us where we are today as we watch the federal government throw trillions of our dollars down the toilet of the looted financial system.

The concept of the ‘victimless crime’ used to mean things like illicit gambling or selling liquor on Sundays, misdemeanors that had to be prosecuted for their dissuasive effects but didn’t really seem all that harmful to most people. But there’s something chilling about seeing how deeply gangsterish exploitation has permeated our society to the point that running a scam on the public purse is seen as a legitimate way to make a living.

And it’s not just the Republican Menace that’s responsible for this outlook, either, although they’re the crudest practitioners. Bill Clinton’s wandering-weenie was defended by the entire Democratic establishment in the 1990s on the assumption that having a cigar-moistening session with Miss Monica didn’t really harm anyone if the lady volunteered for erotic gymnastics in the Oval Office. But then when Clinton’s powerful friends got her a cushy government job to move her out of the way, dozens of better-qualified chumps who didn’t do the president got stiffed, and the entire liberal establishment surged forth to defend the practice along with their own privileges.

Nonetheless, the Bush years consolidated a far more toxic and pathological sense of entitlement among a domestic ruling class that really thinks the world and everything therein was arranged to feed their narcissistic desires. These over-indulged infants were on display over the weekend at the Conservative Political Action Committee powwow and thrown 90 minutes of red meat by their de facto leader, Rush Limbaugh.

If I were a stronger person or still getting a salary to cover these events, I might have studied the content of this opiate-fueled tirade. But the evening news excerpts of Limbaugh going red in that fat face was enough to demonstrate that while the Sarah Palin’s and John Boehner’s represent the slick, faux-populist side of American authoritarianism, Limbaugh leads the unrepentant Hermann Goering faction. With the economy in free-fall and the chances of a full-blown depression still 1 in 3 (according to Dr. Doom Roubini), the appearance of this thug at the head of a major party is not a comforting thought.