roachboy

at this point, i don't particularly care which faction of the oligarchy is responsible for the particular farce that was yesterday's house vote--though i am concerned by the effects of it--as i think anyone is.

my references to neoliberalism are to the ideology that is not only the condition of possibility for this mess, but which also seems a significant obstacle to addressing it----listening to the various televised mea culpa/everybody has to live together why can't we live together moments on television, your 24/7 source of ideology, it was clear that neoliberal assumptions in various guises were being evoked to rationalize opposing the deal, which NO-ONE was arguing was great, but which most thought necessary---because the obvious obtains: this is not just a melt-down of a sector of the banking system now---it is a Problem that is affecting credit flows within and into the united states which will soon begin affecting the entirety of the debt circulation system--which is a structural component of the american economic edifice. what's driving this is panic caused by (a) the sequence of institutional failures AND (b) the inept ad hoc responses of the bush administration's treasury/federal reserve to them. what yesterday seems to me to have demonstrated is that the american system now appears to be a problem as a whole---and not just the bush administration---and the extent of that problem is a direct function of the extent to which there is a separation between that system as such and the neoliberal ideology which has been its dominant political language--and by extension its dominant way of thinking--for 30 odd years. so from a system viewpoint, it seems that the more rapid the particularity of this ideology becomes manifest within the us, the greater the possibility of a separation between the american system as such and the particular problems caused and continued by neoliberalism as an ideology WITHIN that system.

another way of looking at this: the americans (us--you know, the united states) is finding itself hoisted by it's own way of marketing neoliberalism and its correlate in globalizing capitalism as "american capitalism" or "free markets" as "american"---now the theater that's unfolding can be interpreted as that ideological formation being hoisted up a yardarm by its own petard, a variant of that old saw "live by the sword die by the sword".....

but if that's the case, then what probably has to happen is a period of ideological de-programming--which is easy enough if you think about it---people like to believe what they are told they already believe and so if you tell them they now believe something else because what they believed before resulted in both Problems such that the consequences outweighed the good, they'll come along eventually. but the proof will have to be what they see happening around them. so it's not inevitable. but people believe this neoliberal nonsense because it's been repeated at them from all sides for a long time, so deprogramming seems possible as well---but in the shorter run the pressure--tick tick tick---is now really on to fashion SOMETHING that makes the americans APPEAR coherent when the fact is that the dominant ideology prevents that from being the case.

there needs to be a package of some kind passed through congress to generate the appearance of action very very quickly. all this free market principle horseshit has to go by the boards. we'll see if the people who comprise the system have the stomach for it soon enough.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite