Friday, March 6th, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

Remember the movie, The Matrix? Remember how everyone had been tricked into thinking they were living real life when it was really only a computer simulation of a made-up reality? Remember how the only threat to this fantastical, non-existence was the people who were outside the matrix?

It’s starting to appear to me that what we’re witnessing in the meltdown of Wall Street and the collapse of the financial well-being of the U.S. is like a whole bunch of people getting flushed out of the matrix at once, looking around doe-eyed at the destruction around them, wiping the muck off themselves, and wondering, “What the hell was that?!”

Some of them wish they could climb back into the goo and go back to sleep. Others are looking at their barren stock portfolios or bankrupt employers and wishing they’d seen it coming. Still others, who haven’t yet been touched by the success of The One in destroying that which held us prisoners of illusion, wait in fear that they might be next.

The matrix is consumerism… Make that rampant consumerism. Rampant consumerism fueled by a financial system and national mindset that encourages everyone to live in a house they can’t afford, drive a car they can barely pay for each month, eat in restaurants that in the old days were only frequented by wealthy jet-setters, buy big-ticket electronics and appliances… we all know the story.

Part of the philosophy behind the TARP at the end of Bush and the stimulus passed at the start of Obama is to “get the banks to start lending again.” Usually the context of this objective, especially in selling it to Congress and the people, is so that businesses can continue to run, which makes sense. Many businesses need some sort of credit instrument in place to be able to keep things functioning without interruption due to cash flow considerations. I get that.

But behind the veil of helping-out businesses is the real reason we want to get the banks lending again. So that we can go back to our irresponsible consumerism-based economy. That’s right, climb back up the tube, into the tepid, viscous liquid so that we can continue pretending that our economic house of cards is made of brick and mortar, not thin cardboard. We want to be virgins again.

Well, America, you can’t untake the red pill and this genie’s not going back into the bottle. Doing so would be tantamount to sticking our heads back into the sand and believing it’s not all going to come crashing down once more when the current bandaids break free.

We’ve crossed an eye-opening threshold, and I would love to see what the real world of mass financial responsibility looks like. As with anything, the unknown can be dark, scary, and foreboding, but transforming the economic basis of this country from wealth-as-illusion to wealth as a function of real value, created by and for the people, can only be a giant step in the right direction.

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Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 by Bill Swadley.

There’s a lot of talk right now about liberals and Democrats giving porn-king lookalike, Rush Limbaugh, too much attention and far too much airtime, and thereby, affording him undeserved credibility.

I disagree.

For one thing, how do we know Rush isn’t a hard-core, left-wing, liberal, mole whose mission it is to lead his Dittoheads over the cliff of their own fear-based ideology, lemming-like into irrelevant oblivion? Judging from the firestorm of modern-day Peters, denying Rush in the more moderate ranks of the Republican Party, one would think that he’s not acting in the best interest of his party, but to the great benefit of the Democrats. If this is the case, then Rush needs the support of those who would see Obama succeed, not their disregard.

Okay, maybe not, but I’m one of those people who believes that if you give crazy a megaphone, everyone will eventually come to realize that it’s just crazy talking his crazy talk again. So if the Rush-effect is already taking a toll on the right, Dems and liberals shining a spotlight on the strident words and regressive ideas of Limbaugh and his conservative cohorts can only be beneficial to any group from right-of-center to the far left.

With the exception of the Republican Party itself, of course.

In the same way fiscal conservatives cringed with every new hundred-billion squandered during the Bush years,  so moderate Republicans are mortified by the extremist rhetoric voiced by the loudest (albeit not the wisest) orators of their party.

The GOP is already having trouble trying to find their footing in the ever-darkening shadow of the Bush years and the emergence of Limbaugh as their mouthpiece isn’t helping. Other “entertainers,” like Hannity and Coulter, who likely perceive that Limbaugh is gaining some sort of positive traction, are engaging in a sort of conservative onupsmanship, driving the center mad in the process. Let’s face it, identifying only the most extreme on the right as “real” conservatives, contrary to their myopic viewpoint, leaves out a lot of Republicans and most Independents.

If the mainstream of the Republican party can’t find a common ground with these people, it will splinter, and in that splintering, lose any leverage it might have in the federal government now and in the future. Once that leverage is gone, the party will eventually slip from irrelevance to nonexistence. This is not an unprecedented event in US history. If it happened to the Whigs it can happen to the GOP. The Whig Party fractured on the slavery question and never recovered. “The Republican Party,” the history books may one day say, “fractured on the issue of conservatism and never recovered.”

Once the Republican Party either ceases to exist or is so marginalized that it carries no influence in the country, a viable third party will arise. Or maybe two. Or three. One of them might be a party of megaphone-toting crazies led by Rush himself, screaming at the top of their lungs that everyone is out of step except them. We’ll just shake our heads and smile benevolently.

It’s just the crazy talking.

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