Living History
Isn’t it amazing how fast history moves sometimes? The last time I wrote an article for Eurocritics, unregulated free market capitalism was still popularly considered to be quite a good idea. That was less than two months ago, in a different world; a world in which you’d have been likely to have your sanity questioned had you suggested that George W. Bush’s administration would soon be making massive urgent interventions in the market to keep Americans in their homes, or that the UK government would shortly be stepping in to nationalise banks.
But all of that and more has happened. The names of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have become internationally known because of the crisis caused in the US by the collapse of the two giant mortgage lenders. I woke up recently to hear on the radio that the UK government has just bought a major interest in the Royal Bank of Scotland, where I am a customer. Job insecurity is no laughing matter, so I resisted the temptation to ask the friendly staff in my local branch how they felt about suddenly becoming civil servants; I just have to trust that the changes won’t affect their ability to look after my overdraft.
I’ve been saddened to hear about the effects of the financial crisis in Iceland, the most beautiful country I’ve ever visited, where the national economy came close to collapse. I can see the effects closer to home, too: suddenly there’s a severe shortage of job opportunities being advertised in my local paper. When I visited a recruitment agency in Leeds recently, I was told that there was just one area in which new jobs were being created rapidly: debt collection. The queues for bargains at my friendly neighbourhood discount food shops in Bradford have never been quite so long.
I’m genuinely sorry that so many people are suffering because of the economic problems, but at the same time I’m relieved that deregulation is now thoroughly discredited (a word that seems singularly apt) just as surely as Communism was discredited by the collapse of the Soviet Union. The economic era that gave us Reaganomics and Thatcherism has now been pronounced dead by no less an authority than Francis Fukuyama, the economist who previously saw the free market as the natural final state of human society and announced ‘the end of history’. Fukuyama has now admitted that ‘…there are certain jobs that only the government can fulfil’, and called for the rebuilding and revitalising of the American public sector. I am no economist, but I like to think that the species I belong to is capable of more than just mercilessly competing and trying to sell things to one another, so I’m glad that greed is no longer believed to be good. As our credit is crunched, we can see all too clearly where over-consumption has led us.
Meanwhile, in the midst of all the economic chaos and worrying news, I’ve found one personal consolation: I no longer have any difficulty in finding people with whom I can have a good discussion about politics. A crisis of this magnitude causes lots of people to watch the news more closely and to look to our elected leaders for some sort of solution. The state of the global economy has drawn more attention to the US election, and probably decided its outcome, as the Republicans have taken the blame for the crisis. This is at least partially fair, since they have been the loudest American cheerleaders for the free market, and Reaganomics certainly carried the Republican brand. The true extent of the Bush administration’s culpability for the present crisis is endlessly debatable; it’s hard to gauge how much control national governments can have over economic changes as seismic as the ones currently shaking the planet. But in hard times, incumbent politicians tend to get punished by the electorate.
The relentlessly negative tone of the Republicans’ campaign has surely made matters worse for 
them. In troubling times, people naturally look for hope and reassurance rather than for more reasons to worry. Barack Obama has at least sounded like someone trying to bring his nation together to combat problems. The personal attacks on Obama from the McCain/Palin camp have seemed irrelevant, a bout of petty name-calling as the house burns down.
The stories that emerged about McCain and Palin’s personal wealth and extravagance were also given greater power by the difficult circumstances in which many voters suddenly found themselves. If you’re worried about the mortgage payments on your family’s only home, then reading that John McCain owns seven homes can hardly inspire confidence in his ability to relate to your hardships. Meanwhile, the Republicans’ spending of $150,000 on clothes for Palin seemed staggeringly insensitive, the supposedly down-to-earth Alaskan visiting the most expensive, exclusive designer shops just as many voters were buying their own clothes from charity shops or budget stores.
In one limited sense, the imminent election is now less important. Whoever is handed the reins of government will be dealing in damage limitation; there will be no magical remedy to fix things quickly coming from the White House or anywhere else. President Obama or President McCain will be overseeing increased government intervention in the economy whether it suits them ideologically or not. But for a wide variety of other reasons, the election still matters enormously. The new President will certainly need to be calm under immense pressure, and Obama has gained great credit by retaining his cool in the face of some outrageous attacks while McCain has appeared irritable and impulsive on the campaign trail.
And then there are the questions of war and peace. Leaving aside all the moral and humanitarian questions about the American presence in Iraq, the USA needs a less aggressive foreign policy for financial reasons; the American economy simply cannot afford the vast cost of war on multiple fronts.
International co-operation is going to be required to solve the international economic crisis. The election of Obama would have huge symbolic importance in convincing the rest of the world that the world’s most powerful nation would in future be using its power in a more conciliatory manner. I can only agree with the editorial verdict in a journal that endorsed President Bush at the last US General Election, the Financial Times: ‘The challenges facing the next president will be extraordinary. We hesitate to wish it on anyone, but we hope that Mr. Obama gets the job.’
Anyway, we’ll soon know, and I won’t be lonely in my waiting. For one thing, the coverage of the election by the BBC and by Britain’s serious newspapers has become comprehensive and excellent lately.
What’s more, it so happens I spend a lot of my social time around the University of Bradford, where one of the specialities is archaeology. Many of my friends have been trained in that science, and even the most conservative church regulars among them are affronted that the most powerful politician in the world could conceivably soon be Sarah Palin, a believer in creationist theories that they know are demonstrably absurd. The student union bar there is staying open till 4am on the morning of November 5 so that we can watch the results come in while clutching a glass of something calming or celebratory. Hopefully I’ll be back here soon afterwards to tell you what the atmosphere was like. But if I’m a little late, I’m sure you’ll understand.
Written by Dave Jennings · Filed Under Politics, US Politics
“In troubling times, people naturally look for hope and reassurance rather than for more reasons to worry.”
Only weak and pathetic people who can’t get by without some Nanny State coddling them like children .
I’ve never relied on any politician to ensure my prosperity or happiness.
This is what you and other like you represent … the perfect entry to a network of interconnected socialist states with redistributions of wealth to wretched underclasses who can barely spell “success” much less achieve it. This is why you and the U.N. want a quasi-Marxist creep like Barry O as he next US prez.
World communism didn’t win but all the leftist pseudo-intellectuals who wore their ratty Che Guevara T shirts in university are possibly winning another class warfare go-round with their darling have-nots being hailed as totems of their victory.
People like you will never be satisfied until every “have” is beaten down and forced to surrender their hard earned bounty to those who have done nothing in life to earn special dispensation.
Oh look, Grumpy’s back!
David, you have reduced yourself to a caricature. There are so many contradictions, cliches and seriously 50 years out of date thinking in your comments that I have trouble taking you seriously. In fact I don’t, but rave on you crazy non-diamond…
“There are so many contradictions, cliches and seriously 50 years out of date thinking in your comments that I have trouble taking you seriously.”
Please, why not cite what they are, if you are so smart.
And please cite what Barack Hussein Obama has done his life to qualify to be Prez.
Oh, that’s right, he was a community agitator in some south Chicago dung heap filled with drug addicted criminals.
There is no point at all in citing anything to you, David. You have long since passed the point where your excessive certainty, rigid prejudices and outright hatred would allow you to actually have a conversation. You just want to make cheap shots at people you disagree with. Your last sentence above is ample proof of that.
As to being qualified to be President of the USA, usually getting elected to the job is the main qualification, as a clear majority of US citizens appear to be quite happy to do for Obama. That will make a nice change from the last two US presidential elections.
“There is no point at all in citing anything to you, David.”
TRANSLATION: I cannot refute a cold and harsh assessment of American political affairs, because I don’t possess the moral fiber to do so.
“You have long since passed the point where your excessive certainty, rigid prejudices and outright hatred would allow you to actually have a conversation.”
At least I am honest in my opinions, unlike you people, who mask your own prejudices and hatreds behind phony genteel affectations.
Politics is a dirty and vicious free-for-all, not a civilized (not “civilised”) garden party where chinless wonders carefully munch on cream cheese and cucumber sandwiches and drink tea with their pinkies extended just so.
“Your last sentence above is ample proof of that.”
There is no other way to honestly look at Barack Hussein Obama and that part of Chicago.
So ‘David Black’ doesn’t believe that we feel what we say we feel. Well, that’s fine, because I don’t believe in the ‘David Black’ we’ve been told about any more. I gave the character the benefit of the doubt for a while, but the turning point for me came with the last two ‘Black’ postings in the thread about my ‘Loneliness of the Long Distance Election Watcher’ piece, in which ‘Black’ claimed first to have grown up with Holocaust survivors and then that he would have been ‘…fine with the Nazi party…’ if only they’d left the Jews alone, their other targets for extermination presumably being fair game.
I’m sorry, but that simply isn’t credible. Nobody, surely, could be quite that perverse. Other things don’t ring true, either: the author claims lots of harrowing life experience, but the adolescent writing style reminds me of that found in heavy metal music magazines. With its hysterical contempt for courtesy and laughable inflation of Internet threads into sacred Battles, the ‘Black’ prose positively reeks of leather trousers, acne cream and too much time spent playing shoot-‘em-up computer games.
The racism in the posts smells authentic, though, and I seriously wonder if the author is in fact the anti-semite that he accuses others of being. After all, think about it: if you were evil enough to want to use the Internet to incite hatred against Jewish people, what better way to do it than to adopt a persona who regularly drew attention to their Jewishness while spouting some of the most hateful, cynical, misanthropic, bigoted opinions imaginable?
I do kind of agree about politics not being a genteel garden party with tea and sandwiches, though. I’m taking nothing for granted, but I’m very much hoping that in the middle of next week it turns into a big, noisy, joyous global party. I’m planning to be there and I don’t intend to drink tea. See you then!
Ahhh, poor Dave Jennings, living in a small minded world where all Jews fit neat and easily digestible stereotypes. I guess you believe that all Jews wear funny beards and say “oy vey” and look like they just stepped out of the road company of “Fiddler on the Roof” or “Awake and Sing.”
You also foolishly believe that we all feel exactly the same way about nazi Germany.
Hate to tell you, but there were plenty of Jews during WW2 that declared their loyalty to the nazi regime and were spared persecution death as a result, because they saw themselves as Germans or Czechs or Poles or French or Austrians first and Jews second.
You have a lot to learn about life, Dave Jennings, and even more to learn about Jews. We do not all march to the same drummer or think the same way, especially those of us who weren’t raised observant. My Jewish identity is based on blood line, not allegiance to a book of ancient folk tales and superstitions.
People will always hate Jews, that is a given. I don’t concern myself with the “whys” of the situation. I have no hope that someday Jews and Muslims will resolve their differences. I consign myself to the reality that the world is a foul and festering sty and that at the end of time either all Jews will be dead or all Muslims will be dead. The dirty little secret is that neither side really wants it to end. You Westerners can’t understand that.
Fighting gives us purpose and strength. You wouldn’t understand that, either.
It’s actually Mr Black that needs to learn something about life.
His constant attacks on certain types of people, coupled with his own racism and a depressingly inaccurate and hateful view of life – as evidenced by this bitter outburst
.
Of course though, his view is special and we Westerners just wouldn’t understand.
David, I really hope you get over your misanthropy one day. I doubt you have either the inner strength or enough personal integrity to do that though.
How touching that Christopher can’t let Dave fight his own battles!
So Christopher, you’ve never attacked American politicians of the Republican persuasion? You’ve never attacked their policies?
You have your targets, I have mine. I attack people, so what? Where is the rule that says I can’t?
I can’t possibly be a misanthrope, because I do like most conservatives, especially neo-conservatives who consider the PNAC the greatest blueprint for American foreign policy.
I love Big Business and anyone that lives for their own sake.
I respect those who has read and can appreciate the objectivist tenets expressed by Ayn Rand’s books.
Anyone who has read and considers The Prince by Machiavelli one of the greatest books of all time is a champ in my estimation.
That is a person I would sit down and have coffee with anytime.
It’s liberals that I despise. I also despise the constituency of the liberals as well, that is, the dependent underclass of pathetic have-nots of the world who need a life long series of entitlements to live.
I also despise socialists, collectivists, and communists.
David, I’m not fighting Mr Jennings’ battles for him, I’m attempting to communicate with a cynical and hate-filled man who can’t rise above his own petty prejudices and seems to have invented his own meanings for common words.
David, I have criticised politicians on both the left and right of politics, liberal and conservative. Thanks for posting your the conclusion you leapt to, it shows exactly what your prejudice leads you to.
You don’t attack people in a general sense, you only attack entire groups that you perceive to be opposed to your quasi-totalitarian views, despite the fact that those groups, just like Jews, are a very diverse group of people, not a coherent grouping. This IS racism, pure and simple.
You are a misanthrope because you don’t like people, you like a concept, in your case “conservatives, especially neo-conservatives who consider the PNAC the greatest blueprint for American foreign policy”.
The PNAC, which no longer exists by the way, was formed to “promote American global leadership.”[1] Fundamental to the PNAC are the views that ‘American leadership is both good for America and good for the world’ and support for ‘a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity’.
Furthermore, it contended that
You don’t actually support all of those points yourself do you?
To sum up, you love concepts and ideas but not actual people, who can’t be trusted because they don’t see things your way.
To further undermine your perspective, I actually have read Machiavelli’s “The Prince” and found his platform to be focussed too much on process and not enough on real people.
It’s interesting that you mention Ayn Rand as she was implacably opposed to religion. She was a pretty interesting thinker on many diverse subjects and I’m pretty sure that you wouldn’t agree with all her ideas, or, indeed, those of Machiavelli himself. Like many people who are so angry and scarred by the world, you appear to be just cherry-picking those parts of these two different world views that agree with your anger.
I was quite the nihilist in earlier days, but have somehow managed to transcend that exciting although limited perspective. The challenge for you is to do the same.
Sorry, I don’t believe that life is entirely meaningless. if I had thought so, I would not have married and raised two splendid raised children.
Intelligent design makes sense. I don’t believe the universe was formed randomly. What ever the IT is that created it, I don’t consider IT worthy of worship or devotion like some dopey holy roller.
You’re rather adept at pigeon-holing others yourself, it seems.
Again, I accept the world for what it is, not for what I hope it could be like.
Individuals are collections of ideas, beliefs, morals, and convictions. If an individual’s profile does not match mine to a certain degree, I have no tolerance for them. If they diverge too excessively, then they are my enemy.
Rand and Machiavelli are just two people who have influenced my thinking. Their profiles match mine to an acceptable degree.
I’m not here to express happiness. i reserve that for my own flesh and blood.
Sorry, but I am not going to regard people in the sickeningly touchy feely altruist’s
sensibility.
Christopher: I don’t know if you are a blogger or a crass commercial pitchman.
Is it necessary to cite a book that includes a pitch to fill amazon’s coffers?
David, you rail against life every time you spout your cynicism and negativity. I can’t begin to explain the doublethink that must be going on if you can’t actually see that for yourself.
I’m having trouble believing your assertion that you “accept the world for what it is, you seem too ideologically loaded for that. It takes a certain openness to see the nature of things and you don’t strike me as the open minded type.
Intelligent design only makes sense on a superficial level and, although it can seem to be a secular miracle that life exists at all, it does seem that it has in fact done it all by itself.
I thought as a Jew you were naturally a believer in this god notion that you Jews share with the Christians and the Muslims?
I don’t really see much wrong in pigeon holing, it’s just a way of sorting things out. And you yourself have thrown out enough epithets and labels in your faux rage.
I don’t begin to understand why you see people who have differing views to yours as threats or enemies. You are certainly not omnipotent and it is often the case that other people have good ideas too.
You seem to see the opposite of your rigid and hostile stance as “sickening” and “touchy feely” as weak in some way, but I see your inability to overcome your fear of the “other” as weakness.
Finally, I am both a blogger and a crass commercial pitchman – and many other things too. It’s not really that difficult to reconcile these things. I don’t see anything wrong with anybody trying to earn a living, indeed, I would see it as a right.
Don’t worry about me, Chris – my day was made when I saw that I had been accused of ignorance and narrow-mindedness by ‘David Black’. Honestly, how priceless is that? It’s like having Homer Simpson call you a slob!
For the record, I have a first class honours degree in arts and social sciences and have travelled widely. I live in the exceptionally multi-cultural city of Bradford, which is home to many Muslims who seem curiously disinterested in killing anyone. I spend much of my time at the University of Bradford, which attracts students from all over the world; I think it’ll be a great place to watch the results coming in tomorrow night. I have met lots of people from a very wide range of ethnic backgrounds, including a diverse range of folks with a Jewish heritage. There is one person in this thread who appears to believe in rigid ethnic stereotypes, and in the words of that great Jewish American genius Bob Dylan: it ain’t me, babe.
I must say, though, that I have been particularly grateful for the much-needed light relief brought to this election campaign by a couple of outstanding American comedians who make their Jewish heritage a part of their act. Jon Stewart has repeatedly skewered the McCain/Palin campaign with comic brilliance and merciless accuracy on ‘The Daily Show’. Sarah Silverman’s ‘The Great Schlep’ campaign, aimed at getting young Jews to persuade their older relatives to vote Obama in Florida, was a fine bit of comedy with a serious purpose, and the video she made to promote it was a wickedly funny highlight of the campaign: it can still be seen at The Great Schlep. I am also grateful for the wisdom of Jewish American voters nationally: Gallup reports that they’re favouring Obama by a ratio of nearly three to one.
I won’t have much time to be here this week as I’m in appearing in one stage show and rehearsing for another one, but I do hope to drop by to post a few celebratory words in the small hours of Wednesday morning. If I haven’t partied too hard, that is.
Well. Dave, my acting teacher was none other than Sandy Meisner from the Neighborhood Playhouse right here in New York City.
The point of fact is that Israelis are backing McCain because they know that Barack Hussein Obama wants to negotiate with terrorists that have threatened to destroy Israel.
The point of fact is that John McCain wants to kill terrorists instead of negotiating with them.
That’s the sign of a warrior. Barry O. is not a warrior, but a cowardly leftist more concerned with class warfare than fighting real battles where blood is shed.
Liberal Jews in America don’t care a whit about Israel. They actually see the Pallys as victims, the very same Pally vermin that fire rockets and suicide bomb innocent Israeli women and children for no other reason than because their Jews.
[Unacceptable personal attack deleted by the publisher of this site]
David B, I was pleasantly surprised to read your first sentence in the above comment and thought you were actually going to play nice for a change. How mistaken I was, for right after that you retreated to the usual blend of muddled “logic” and outright insane hatred that usually characterises your comments.
It really doesn’t matter who Israelis are supporting in this US election as they don’t get to vote (bar the Americans who have moved to Israel and kept their US citizenship of course).
What does matter is that both Barack Obama and John McCain will end up negotiating – or trying to negotiate – a peace settlement in the Middle East. Just as the British managed to do in Northern Ireland. Unless an attempt at genocide is made by Israel, which would be bitterly ironic, a negotiated peace settlement is going to be the only way to end the conflict there.
McCain isn’t a warrior at all, he’s a politician, and politicians negotiate whenever possible. It’s just what they do. It’s also why the USA and every other peaceful country doesn’t allow military types to be in charge of the political process; their perspective is too narrowly focussed to be able to understand the bigger picture.
You’re just as wrong with your racist remark about liberal Jews in the USA. It is perfectly possible to be critical of some of Israel’s policies in the Middle East without actually opposing the idea of the country’s existence, although I know this kind of slightly more nuanced thinking is beyond the reach of the mono-dimensional thinker…
Well, that has to go down as one of the best sleepless nights of my life. Election night in the University bar was tense at first, but soon became a very happy affair as the results started to come in. It certainly lived up to my expectations about its internationalism – there were representatives from the Netherlands, Croatia and Vietnam around my table alone.
Around 1:30am, when the party started to get so noisy that I couldn’t hear the results on the TV any more, I headed for home to continue watching on the BBC. It was very moving seeing how much the result meant to so many Americans, especially African-Americans who now know that there is no upper limit to the opportunities their country offers them.
The data at If The World Could Vote suggests that the news will be welcomed in all corners of the globe, including Israel – though perhaps some of the biggest celebrations will be in Kenya, where they have apparently declared a national holiday!
I thought that John McCain’s concession speech was quite magnificently gracious, positive and constructive; it’d be nice to think that his supporters would take his advice to get behind the next administration and to help to America through the present economic crisis. President-elect Obama’s speech in that Chicago park full of joy brought tears to my eyes; the tale of the 106-year-old voter and all the changes and achievements she’d seen in her life was very well chosen. Obama is a wonderfully inspirational orator, as even many of his detractors concede; I can be a sceptical old so-and-so at times, but he made me believe in the possibilities for a different and more hopeful era.
Welcome back, America the beautiful.
Sorry, Dave, but Israelis overwhelmingly preferred a candidate that would rather kill terrorists than negotiate with them.
Good for you, you got your wish, to have installed in America another cowardly socialist one-worlder who would further erode his country’s hegemony and push it further into being yet another Second or Third World stink hole like the UK, or Germany, or France, or the Netherlands, or Sweden, etc., for example.
David, I’ve decided there has been enough exposure of your bitter old man blues on this site. I’m not going to allow any more comments along these lines from you.
You just keep making the same hate-filled and irrelevant remarks and there is simply no point in allowing you to repeat this ad nauseum.
Either find something new to say or move along and spread your poison on some other site. The choice is yours – although the decision will be mine…
On a happier note, the US election results were indeed a significant change towards a more positive future for both the USA and the wider world.
Oh yes, Sarah Silverman is SOOOO funny … “I F—ed Matt Damon”?
Is that what you find funny, Christopher?
You’re confused again, Mr Black. It is the author of this article that is the Sarah Silverman fan, not I.