Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams has a wonderful strip on the real credit crisis – the fact that so few people can trust each other any more.
The only thing that was missing from the strip was a final square or two reassuring people that Washington will intervene and make honesty the law of the land.
The best thing about having large structural institutions that govern a society is that they can be blamed for any failure, releasing the real culprit….our petulant selves from any responsibility. Now , we can all stand back and assert that capitalism is inherently immoral even though it is simply a codified method of conversation via exchange and so is no more, nor any less moral than those engaged in it. The liberal will assert that the poor innocent people be given a big strong government to protect it from the evil forces of malign capitalism. I am put in mind of the Devils dictionary by one of my favorite cranks, Ambrose Bierce. He defines a “Conservative” as a statesman “enamored of existing evils” while the liberal “wishes to replace them with others”.
It would seem we are enraptured by an era where political and philosophical discourse is boiled down simply to defining one’s self in opposition to something and we have a fine industry , with much cash changing hands lining K Street and it’s essence is opposition. Put on the siege helmet, crank down the thumb screws and bellow like Picts but do it with a three hundred dollar haircut and a two thousand dollar suit so as to appear , at all costs….”Respectable”.
This is red meat satire time folks, the largest production of a farce in the history of our rather farce-prone species. As usual, the distance between tears of laughter and tears of anguish is small indeed.
Thanks to the cheerful soldiering of our good Mr. Bovard, the laughter maintains a narrow lead.