Due to the monetary blackmail being leveled at the people of the United
States by it's financial ruling class and the subsequent banking crisis
and stock market drop caused by their unregulated greed, I suppose it's
only natural that our myopic press would equate this disaster with the
great crash of 1929. I submit it's more likely that this is but a
symptom of a wider crisis that should instead recall events from 60
years later.



In 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, it signaled the end for the Soviet
empire.  It's rulers had foolishly believed they could spend whatever
they wanted - so long as they could maintain military parity with the
US, their people would have to wait. But they had actually bankrupted
themselves in doing so. Their war of choice in Afghanistan, far from
extending their empire and redrawing the map of the Middle East and
Central Asia, bogged down into a bloody slog against a native
insurgency. It demonstrated not the awesomeness of their military but
its severe limits as a tool of political power. Their humiliating
withdrawal combined with their obvious economic ability to do anything
about it - and to do anything for their own people - accelerated the
unraveling of their entire governing philosophy and the Communist Party
lost it's grip on power.



Sound familiar? The Bush administration has wasted at least a trillion
dollars on a military adventure that that has met none of it's
strategic goals. It has provided a recipe to our enemies for future
asymmetric warfare and has so degraded our military readiness and
reputation as to make future attacks more likely,while emboldening
emerging empires. And here's the key: in one of the greatest acts of
moral and political cowardice in the history of government, Bush has
refused to accept any responsibility to pay for his catastrophic war.
Thinking he could stick his successors with the price tag, George Bush
bet the farm he could win and get out before the bill came due. This
entirely predictable failure of leadership has left us at the mercy of
the world financial machinery he used to borrow the money to pay for
what he was (rightly!) afraid to ask his own citizens to provide. No
matter what lipstick John McCain tries to put on the Iraqi pig it's
been a colossal failure and may now do for Republicanism - or worse for
American democracy - what Afghanistan did for Communism.



How quickly could our very ability to govern unravel? Even in February
1989, near the end of the Afghan disaster, few in Moscow would have
thought - or been willing to admit - that they'd have completely lost
control before the end of the year.  Can we avoid the same fate?
Certainly not if the Republicans are left in charge. If Obama wins it
will still be a very difficult road indeed. But if Progressives are
going to continue to claim
to be the reality-based community, then I say Obama's embrace of a
rescue plan for the financial industry is actually a glass that's half
full. Because as abhorrent as many of us find the necessity,
recognizing that just because their attempt to blackmail the taxpayers
into forking over another trillion or so is an outrageous crime, that
doesn't mean they don't have us by balls. If they have nothing else to
lose the Republicans and their moneyed masters will surely drag us all
down with them.



So here's to hoping the glass really is half full.  That Obama sees
that handwriting on it and has decided to grit his teeth, pay the
bribe, and get on with rebuilding the country before the Wall of
ignorance and arrogance erected by by George Bush, John McCain and the
Republican Party crushes us all as it comes tumbling down.