Rationality In The Face Of Crisis

A few years back, George Saunders wrote a chillingly satirical essay entitled The Braindead Megaphone (also the title of his compendium of short non-fiction) that sadly encapsulates what passes for the majority of public discourse, especially among politicians and cable news outlets. It would be shameful if the bluster and bellicosity that stands in for intellectual debate couldn't be more frequently countered here and there by the tonic of eloquent and elegant simplicity, as in the above YouTube solution to Wisconsin's manufactured "budget crisis," allegedly created by the neolibertarian billionaire Koch brothers via their gubernatorial puppet Scott Walker. It really boils down to basic mathematics; when your state deficit is almost identical to the tax breaks you just handed over to your corporate masters, it's hard to hear your cries of poverty among the clanging chimes of your hypocrisy.

And speaking of math, I just don't understand the calculus of such anti-union vitriol and the general just-world hypothesis that underlies much of class relations in the United States, which seems to be at the crux of the Wisconsin wrangling. If multinational corporations continue their brazen assault on the middle class (of which union busting is but one thrust), and more American workers and consumers are thrown into unemployment and poverty, won't that undercut the very markets for the products that the multinational corporations are producing? Are all the untapped markets on Earth equal to the financial might of the properly funded and motivated American middle class? Or will our nation's near future possess a pernicious tenor that's part Gilded Age sans charity and part Children Of Men dystopia, where the pockets of wealth are shielded from the oceans of powerless and poor?

It's times like this that make me wish I were smarter, so I could understand the shadowy machinations of all the actors, because impotent laughter at this level of venal absurdity seems like both a waste of precious energy and the only sane option. At least, about as sane as each person in the fifty states cutting a check to clear the balance sheets.

(And as a parenthetical postscript, is there anything sadder than watching the name of a superlative musical talent such as Scott Walker -- one of my musical desert island faves -- be associated with this Wisconsin wingnut? Oh, the horror.)