The Frankfurter School

The 700 billion dollar bailout package that is likely to pass Congress this week is notable for several things.  It is an unprecedented commitment of taxpayer revenue for a single purpose, it breaks hard with the governing free-market ideology that has dominated both parties for the past thirty years, and it grants unprecedented new powers to the executive branch of the federal government.  In offering a New Deal in response to a similar economic crisis, a President of long-ago told us that fear was the only thing we had to fear.  Today, fear is the only thing we’re offered as its used to pass The Bad Deal.

As Naomi Klein has brilliantly distilled in her landmark book The Shock Doctrine, the only consistent ideology of this administration and its Democratic enablers is the use of the shock produced by a crisis to force deeply unpopular economic changes in favor of powerful corporations upon a quietly compliant and frightened population.  Written and passed within a week of the crisis, the bailout bill beats the six-week-turnaround of the hastily-passed and barely-read USA PATRIOT Act, another sweeping assertion of executive power rushed through in a crisis without discussion, analysis or (god forbid) debate.  A very telling New York Times report entitled “Congressional Leaders Stunned by Warnings” noted that Administration officials laid the groundwork for this by presenting the threat to (or scaring the crap out of) key members of Congress.  Glenn Greenwald notes the parallels between this process and the invasion of Iraq, in which respected members of Executive branch agencies, solely charged with the sober assessment of fact, have tailored information to fit their ultimate agenda in order to scare lawmakers into “bi-partisan” compliance.
Like Dick Cheney, who was the CEO of Halliburton before he came into the Administration and led us into a war that happened to be the best thing that ever happened to his company, so too will former Goldman Sachs CEO-turned-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson oversee an intervention in the economy that his company will see great profit from.  Like every other significant event of the past eight years, Bush is benched during the crisis, while all around him, in every department of the executive branch, titans of industry use the federal government to loot the treasury and re-write the law to immunize themselves.

The Democrats are so complicit in these economic problems they find themselves in a very difficult predicament so close to an election.  Among the largest beneficiaries of Wall Street money in the House and Senate are Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd, chairmen of their respective Banking Committees.  And Barack Obama’s support from that sector is greater than McCain’s.  Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid continue their Kabuki Theater of Objections to the Bush plan, while using their total control of the Congressional agenda to pass whatever Bush asks of them.  This has left an odd opening for John McCain to grab the populist side of this issue.  Although he changes positions more often than his toothbrush, he knows that if he frames a message simply and powerfully enough it doesn’t matter that he’s lying.  “I’m Against this bailout” — and whether he votes for it or not (and he’ll probably skip it) that’s the message that gets across to the American workers who don’t understand economics any better or worse than McCain does, but know the bailout doesn’t pass the smell test.

What is in this bill?  We will be finding out for months and years to come what it means.  Will it bankrupt our treasury and force further cuts to social services, health and safety regulatory agencies, or prevent funding of a national health care program?  Isn’t it shocking and unprecedented that a party of the far-right would nationalize private corporations?  What sort of movement fueled by deeply nationalistic and religious fervor responds to an economic crisis by giving itself broad new powers and erasing the lines between government and corporate interests?  I believe it’s called National Socialism.  Ever heard of it?

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