Category: The Bush Years

The Unspoken Ideology

Originally posted: August 28, 2006

White people really are better. We just are: we’re smarter, better educated, and better looking. We know more — so much more than all the other races of people on the planet that we have to be like parents to them. We know what’s best for them, and because they don’t have our wealth of wealth and knowledge (which is evidence in itself that they are inferior to us), we have to take care of them. And we know best how to take care of them — they should be grateful to us, after all, for the many things we’ve done to help them live better lives under our vastly superior, modern American system.

There is a cross we have to bear: people around the world are troublesome, and when they get out of line, it’s up to us Americans to get in there and restore order. We don’t want to have to go blow up these people, but they force us to with their bad behavior and idolatrous religions and irregular forms of government.

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Money Wants To Be Free

12/14/2008

Suppose we were to uncomplicate money.

I was reading a story in the Washington Post today about how the city of New York is cutting a daycare program for middle-class Alzheimer’s sufferers.   The program is badly needed by the families it serves, but the $1.2 million price tag and relatively low number of beneficiaries made it tempting to city government, and they cut the program.  All 12 centers will close by the end of the month.  Meanwhile, the hundreds of families they served are out of luck.

Once again, the question arises — why must we do without needed services provided by willing service providers just because of this arbitrary, made-up thing called money?  It’s true that when viewed through the usual lens of “because that’s the way capitalism works”, you can almost rationalize hurting real people to save a buck.  But when you jump up a level and look at the big picture, it just seems stupid that people go cold or hungry or without healthcare or education, because they weren’t blessed by birth or circumstance with a large enough share of the coin of the realm. Read More

What Is Capitalism?

Originally posted on iBrattleboro.com 10/28/2008

When I was ten, I borrowed a book from the School library called Capitalism, Communism, Socialism, which purported to explain the various economic systems to ten year olds.  My parents made me take it back because they said little children should not be reading about dangerous ideas like communism.  I showed them — in my senior year of high school, I wrote a term paper on The Communist Manifesto.

Despite this early interest in economics, I realized recently that I have almost no idea what capitalism really is, despite the fact that I use the word all the time.  So this essay is an effort to learn. Read More

Banking and Me

9/30/2008

My problem with the bailout is manifold but at least part of it is personal. Being a person of relatively low income, I’ve had a lot of opportunity to deal with the less friendly side of banks. At times, it seems as though they really do want a pound of flesh given the outrageous rates they charge on their credit cards — up to 33%, if you can believe it — and the fees on banking services generally.

I have a little bit of history with banks. As a young woman, I worked for banks and savings and loans for almost ten years, right through the financial crises of the early 1980s. One of my employers went under while I worked there and was taken into receivership by the federal government. I still remember the auditors marching in in their black suits. And hey, guess what the problem was? Worthless mortgage-backed securities, a measly $48 million dollars worth. Read More

Living Through The New Depression

5/23/2007

I’m sure there are still some starry-eyed optimists out there, but lately, everybody I know is fed up with with the way things are going. Maybe it was tax bills, or the impeachment vote, or colony collapse disorder, but I feel as though we collectively sagged over the last few months. For me it was the Virginia Tech shootings, a weekend during which (coincidentally) over 150 people died in Baghdad. I kind of fell apart, and was starting to think there might be something wrong with me when my neighbor mentioned in passing that she had been feeling the same way.

Misery loves company. I was relieved to know that I was not the only one who couldn’t take any more bad news. Since that dreary weekend, I’ve run into a surprising number of people near and far who feel, as I do, that something’s got to give. Many Americans seem to be ready for a change to something inspiringly different. Read More

American Mythos Part 3

A little over 2000 years ago, a group of men decided to put together a book of the historical documents and texts they had floating around. These men were of a tribal culture that had originated in the desert, herding animals and worshipping a warlike male god. This jealous male god is still with us today–his name is Jehovah; the book is the Bible. But at the time that the early Jews were commencing their archival efforts, they were under pressure from a neighboring tribe, a tribe that worshipped a nature goddess. These men did not want the goddess religion to prevail over their own people, who were starting to slip back into old ways. So the early Jewish priests and scribes adopted a foundation myth that battled the goddess by making women the enemy. Read More