AMERICA'S BLUES as reported by THE ECONOMIST

AMERICA’S BLUES – As reported by The Economist

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© August 3, 2008

“Melancholy is a kind of demon that haunts our island, and often conveys herself to us in an easterly wind.”

Joseph Addison (1672 – 1719), English essayist.

Seldom have I read such a concise piece as this article that appeared in the Tampa Tribune, Sunday, August 3, 2008 in the "Commentary Section." It is titled "Red, White and Blues: America's Funk." You can find it on the newspaper's website (www.TBO.com) should you be so inclined.

You have heard me rant about its main points. The rant has become reality. That is what happens when the bottom falls out.

Some main points of the article:

(1) The American swagger is gone as 8 out of 10 Americans are in a depressing funk.

This change is blamed on the hapless administration of president Bush, but that is to be expected. We like to raise our leaders above us to treat them more than human only to tear them down as less than human when our appetites and indulgences drive everything south. We never blame ourselves.

(2) It is American capitalism, stupid!

The August 11, 2008 issue of Time magazine is dedicated to "The Economy." Pundits and Bill Gates tell us how to make capitalism work, and for an old codger such as myself, it sounds strangely like the same palaver I heard in the 1950s when Sputnik reduced education to a whirling nightmare; the 1970s when OPEC's oil embargo, the Iran Hostage Crisis, Watergate and Vietnam warranted the title in my book WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS (1990) of "Incipient Catastrophe."

Why catastrophe? I found the circumstances reminiscent of the "fall of Rome." The 1980s confirmed this with Japan eating our lunch, and buying the store.

"WWMs" was written nearly two decades ago when it was clear Detroit was living in a dream world with the die cast. Like a house of falling playing cards, we were all falling prostrate to its momentum.

(3) Consumer confidence an oxymoron?

The Economist list of contributors to the angst adds up to a big headache with an aspirin cure. My wonder is if this article will have any impact.

Last year when I was in Europe, the Euro was worth about $1.20; today it is about $1.59. Gasoline had not yet spiked; so more and more SUVs and trucks glutted the highways and byways.

The Economist points out that "America's beer," Budweiser, is now owned by little Belgium. This gets some people’s attention.

Less attention is given our spiraling debt of $ trillions and $ trillions owned primarily by foreign note holders. Consumer confidence is indeed an oxymoron as we are all mainly renters not owners (although we think we own what we own) and walk the economic tightrope without ever looking up, down or around.

(4) Forever looking for a sure thing. The Economist reports "many Americans feel as if they missed the boom."

Does that explain the rash of casinos across the land? Imagine a growth industry that produces nothing but false hope?

Hope is a passive word; courage is an active word. We have been reduced from doers to hopers.

The Economist reports that "between 2002 and 2006" the incomes of 99 percent rose by an average of 1 percent a year in real terms." How many saved a dime?

It reports further that as impressive as this rise, the top 1 percent saw its wealth rise 11 percent per year "between 2002 and 2006." Then the article hits us where it hurts: "three quarters of the economic gains during the Bush's presidency went to that top 1 percent."

There is deception here. It implies that this is a unique trend indigenous to this sitting president, alone, when it has been a consistent pattern.

In the 1970s, I was teaching a graduate seminar at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida for students of Golden Gate University of San Francisco, California. I presented a set of statistics very similar to those the present article for the United States since WWII.

Several students stayed after class, stunned and incredulous. I gave them references to check out my assertions. They did not want to believe the system was weighed against them. They wanted to believe capitalism’s invisible hand was for all as Adam Smith had promised.

Yet, since the beginning of capitalism, 80 to 90 percent of the wealth has been controlled by 10 to 20 percent of the people. Accessibility to wealth was then and remains now mainly a myth. Time's August issue will not change that.

It is why my books and articles have been provocative. They represent an attempt to engage the ordinary person to do the things that give him or her a chance at some independence and security.

It takes the realization that credit card companies, banks, and commercial enterprises with their tantalizing discounts are not in business for this purpose, but to rest personal independence and security from one to add to their own coffers.

Their economic strategy is for you to want to own a house that looks like those of the rich, a house you can't afford but will give you a sense of connection to the wealthy.

They want you to buy a boat that you can't afford, or some other luxury item that will make you feel as if you are affluent.

They want you to buy clothes you don't need, an automobile you can't afford when the one you are driving is working fine, but isn't the latest model.

See the trend?

It is the cloying need to make an impression convinced that it is your patriotic duty to work and spend paycheck-to-paycheck so the top 1 percent can maintain that ever-increasing edge.

No one can understand how an oil company can have $15 billion in quarterly profits when most people can't afford the gas to drive their car.

Few can understand why medical prescriptions cost so much when pharmaceutical companies have $ billion in quarterly profits. Drug companies insist "it takes years to develop a new drug," but they don't mention the government funded subsidized research. Notice the medical and pharmaceutical professions are less in the business of prevention than in ameliorative treatment.

We are not happy campers; we have lost our self-restraint and are paying dearly for it.

(5) Globalization is under fire.

We loved reading Tom Friedman’s “The World Is Flat” with his glorification of "this electronic age," that is, until free trade and immigration policy became scapegoats to our economic crises.

Politicians always have scapegoats in their pockets to get our dander up, and of course we believe them because they're in the know.

The Economist could not have said it with more bitter irony: panic is on display "when a nation built on immigrants is building a fence to keep them out."

Politicians on both sides of the aisle are endorsing some form of this asinine immigration policy instead of going back to the genesis of the problem, which is the double standard of work and respect. This, too, will blow up in our face.

We cannot have it both ways: cheap labor and cheat policies. People will put their lives at risk as long as survival is at stake.

We never seem to learn from history. As for globalization, we treat it as if it were a new thing. Globalization has existed since the days of the Romans.

We are a consumer driven economy and have never thought about the price of its intemperance.

(6) What about nation-building at home?

The paradox about nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq is that we have failed schools, failing children, and a falling apart infrastructure at home. The Romans allowed this to happen at home as well. It wasn’t terrorists that crippled Rome, but its own excesses. This left it vulnerable for the Visigoths and Germanic tribes of the north to plunder the city and collapse an empire.

(7) Resilience, how real?

The Economist points out that the United States is good at fixing itself, good at rebounding from its excesses and false steps. It claims the US has this capacity because it isn't stodgy and taciturn like Europe.

The Economist suggests self-correction will deal with the collapse and rubble of our misbegotten ways. New life, new innovations, new bursts of inspiration will absolve America of all its sins. Why not? It has always been so before, right?

This resilience sounds very much like "adolescent rebound" where the child has never had to experience the pain and struggle to grow up, or like America's nearly quarter millennium history.

Psychological characteristics may help to describe this collective phenomenon. To wit, personality is the "acquired self." Personality is what is not one's own. It is the "invented self."

Essence is our inheritance. It is what we are born with. Essence cannot be lost, cannot be changed or injured as easily as personality. It is our "real self."

Personality can be changed almost completely with the change of circumstances. Personality can be lost and injured.

Essence is the basis of one physical and mental makeup. It involves natural propensities, talents, our native intelligence, and innate capacities.

Personality is learned behavior consciously or unconsciously.

By unconsciously, I mean the inclination to imitate or attempt to be like someone else even if not compatible with one's own essence. Personality can be reduced to acquired tastes with all sort of artificial likes and dislikes subliminally bombarding the psyche.

When personality is developed at the expense of essence, we become pleasers, true believers, people who need to belong so they go along, people who are captives to self-designed cages.

When personality begins to dominate essence, we become less healthy as we are attracted to what is bad for us and to dislike what is good for us.

Normally, when essence dominates personality, personality can become quite useful. But if personality dominates essence, this can produce wrong results of many kinds.

Personality is not bad. We must have personality to live a social life. Personality and essence should grow parallel to each other with one not outgrowing the other.

Cases of essence outgrowing personality occur among uneducated people. These people may be very good, and even clever, but they are incapable of development in the same way as people with more developed personalities.

Such people often find comfort in using derogatory words to describe minorities or people not as naturally gifted as they are. They are also quick to reduce others to simple stereotypes. Media, advertisers, and politicians study and exploit these propensities with great proficiency.

Cases of personality outgrowing essence are often to be found among the rich and famous, the cultured and privileged, the movers and shakers. They fawn and spawn each other as the celebrity culture.

They often rise to head corporations, educational institutions, charitable foundations, religious institutions, the entertainment industry, media, and government because they embody what current society promotes. Rhetoric trumps reality in the new world order.

Essence in such cases remains in a half-grown, half-developed, half-realized state. Expediency and serendipity prevail at the expense of patience and plodding more essential to release significant essence.

What does this mean, and why do I mention it here?

We have rather implicit but rigid norms for personality and essence.

Quick and early growth of personality and essence to such norms can stop growth and development at a very early age. As our self-indulgent society might suggest, it has.

We are taught to be polite, obedient, submissive, passive, punctual, engaging and conforming, good natured, happy and obliging from preschool on, while we are expected to be modest about displaying our talent or specialness for fear of appearing elitist.

The result is that many grow up physically mature but emotionally immature acquiring high academic, business, professional or political status without growing up, acting in essence as if age of ten or twelve suspended in terminal adolescence. It is why leaders today often appear as if they have never left the sixth grade.

Consequently, while submerged in the wonder of electronics and the sophistication of a postmodern society, there seems a preference for underdeveloped essence when it comes to maturity.

Why else would there be such infatuation with gratuitous violence in entertainment, electronic games, spectator sports, or gamesmanship in business and politics? A competitive society is driven by imitation, replication, and duplication while trumpeting bogus creativity. China and India have fallen prey to this code.

If you want to look at the problems of society, look to the repressed development of essence in our young people. Jean Paul Sartre has said modern society lacks authenticity. He was referring to the artificiality of personality and the warped development of essence. Boredom, he claimed, is indicative of a society intimidated by adulthood.

(8) The Economist “slam-dunk” world of rhetoric.


“Countries like people behave dangerously when their mood turns dark.”

“America is not just hurting allies and trading partners but itself.”

“Credit crunch is in part the consequence of a flawed regulatory system.”

“Lax monetary policy allowed Americans to build up debts and fueled a housing bubble that had to eventually burst.”

“Lessons need to be learned.”

“Over-unionized and unaccountable American school system needs the same competition as its universities which are the envy of the world.”

Then on to health care, the rise of China, and then ending with, “Everybody goes through bad times.”

This rhetorical litany of disaster ends with this softball: “America has had the wisdom to take the first course (i.e., learn from its mistakes) before. Let’s hope it does so again.”

I must confess I thank God for the American blues, for the high cost of gasoline, for the credit card crunch, for the falling prices of homes, for the drop out sufferers, and why?

Because the abstract anodynes of enlightenment fail to move us off the dime, circumstances do. We have needed something to break through our sleepwalking.

Lord Byron’s knew something of our dilemma:

“Melancholy is a fearful gift; what is it but the telescope of truth, which brings life near in utter darkness, making the cold reality too real?”

I take no comfort in hope. I look for the courage to wake up America!