Note: my essay
on David Foster Wallace is published
in the Baltimore City Paper’s Big Books issue this
week. I also have an essay
on children's literature in ther
same issue, if you're interested.
Artist's Statement
I
spent last weekend visiting my friends Jim and Sarah
in New Haven,
enjoying the respectable pleasures of suburbia: taking
Percocets, figure-skating on Wii, watching a show titled “Destroyed
in Seconds” on HDTV. One segment of this program
showed an F-117 Stealth fighter losing a wing, tumbling
out of control,
and crashing into a residential neighborhood during an
air show. Over footage of this fiery accident is clearly
audible
the voice of the announcer at the air show, saying in a
relaxed, laconic voice: “Everyone just stay where
you are, folks, stay where you are… everything’s
all right… maybe
a good time to get a bite to eat…” Jim and
I gaped at each other in astonishment and delight, and
thanks
to Tivo were able to rewind and listen to this insane monologue
again. He reminded me of Kevin Bacon as the ROTC cadet
in Animal House shrieking, “Remain calm! All is well!” while
smoke bombs and ten thousand marbles fill the streets,
Bluto in a pirate costume swings down and abducts a sorority
girl,
and the EAT ME cake splits asunder to reveal The Deathmobile
a-snarl, roaring through the chaos.
I mention
this because everything you hear any government official
or financial expert say
about the current financial
crisis
is no different from this announcer's blathering: Stay
where you are. Maybe a good time to get a bite to eat. John
Ralston Saul, in Voltaire’s Bastards, writes
about the reflexive instinct of all governments to “avoid
panic” in
all situations, including situations in which panic is
the appropriate response (as when the French government
claimed
that the prevailing winds were blowing all the radiation
from the Chernobyl disaster neatly around France, as if
by divine
intervention). I’ve seldom seen it more clearly illustrated
than by this scene of a supersonic jet erupting into a
fireball in a housing development while an announcer suggests
this
might be an opportunity to grab a hot dog.
This
week I had lunch with my friend Steve, who was a broker
for about
two weeks before he quit in horror. “We became
a socialist country this week,” is how he put it. “Although
the beneficiaries are all multibillion-dollar corporations,
which is not exactly how I would’ve planned it.” As
I pointed out in an artist’s statement a few weeks
ago, the people who own this country champion free markets
and small
government when they’re making money, but scamper
for taxpayer bailouts when their crimes are exposed and
their
con games fall through. In short, they privatize gains
and socialize
losses, an economic philosophy also known as Heads-I-win-tails-you-lose.
Events
are in fact conforming disturbingly to the scenario
outlined in an email sent to me by my Peak Oil friend
Rob back in July: "over the course of the next
few months the US banking and financial system collapses,
beginning with another
major bank failure (or its equivalent), followed by
runs
on ordinary savings accounts, then followed in turn
very soon
by gasoline and diesel shortages, followed shortly
thereafter by food shortages." I asked Rob about
his predictions yesterday, and he followed up with
this analysis:
I'd
say we're still a little short right now of even
the first step (collapse of the US banking and financial
system)
[…]
though last week's events look a lot like the beginning
of that process. The failures of Fannie Mae, Freddie
Mac, and
AIG were certainly the kinds of "failures" spelled
out in the scenario. Reports indicate that the current
Hank Paulsen plan was centrally prompted by fear
of runs on banks,
though among other scary things too. (So that's about
right, so far). But fears of fuel shortages in Nashville
seem to
have been prompted much more by concerns about the
follow-on effects
of Ike's impact on refineries than by understanding
that the financial crisis will have its own follow-on
effects.
And widespread
fuel and then food shortages are not currently anywhere
in view. (They follow, when they do, since we have
little of
either stored anywhere in this country, and so are
vulnerable to panic
buying as soon as the inevitable mass psychology
of panic and hoarding are set off.)
But
let's check back as we observe how things play
out this month. If Paulsen's plan is rejected,
or is otherwise
rapidly
proven inadequate, bad things could accelerate
and do so quickly. In any case, there is zero chance
that Paulsen's
plan or any
variant of it now being discussed will stabilize
the gigantic
problems that have prompted them. They are all
nothing more than new sidewalks (gangplanks?) on an earthquake.
And that's
all they're meant to be. It was only a few weeks
ago that Paulsen said he never expected to need
the
powers
he has
now demanded.
We are lied to constantly, and with impunity, as
you know. […] So this week's pieces of the
larger crisis, however deep it turns out to be,
will only have begun to shift the
topsoil of the grand canyons of shit that lie beneath
us. The rest of our lives, if we live long enough,
will be spent
immersed
in the stuff. The only thing worse would be to
be younger, and so to have more years ahead of
us enduring
that.
Jeez
louise. Way to liven up the party, Rob.
Yesterday
I spent about an hour on the phone talking to my friend
Megan about
the collapse of the
American Empire.
We
discussed the historic failure of the economy,
and the dismal possibility that the ineducable
dullards
of the
Red States,
infatuated with the smug, preening middle-school
bitch goddess Sarah Palin, are actually going
to vote for
another four
years of the same. She and I are both, for
the third time in a decade,
resigning ourselves to the impotent, bitter
position: Live it up, shitheads. Have a ball. Good luck
getting those
manufacturing jobs back. Oh and let us know
how
Iraq works out. Megan described
the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics,
which her mother more or less forced her to
watch, and
reported to
me their
ominous message (it wasn’t nearly subtle
enough to be a subtext): We Can Do Everything
Better Than You. Everything.
Megan, glumly, kinda believes it. We can’t
do shit in this country anymore. We blew it.
The Chinese and the
Japanese
are just waiting to buy our country now.
Megan’s
hope is that, once we’ve been forced
to give up our dumb imperial ambitions, we’ll
maybe remember all those ideals we used to
believe in—you know, America?
This is so Megan, and it's one reason why
I love her, but I have to say it really doesn’t
sound much like us to me. Sure, it’s
true that post-imperial nations can be pleasant
places to live: you get good museums, fine
cuisine, life’s
usually pretty comfortable, and you don’t
have to worry about invading other countries
and maintaining occupations
anymore. But somehow I don’t see us
going that route. We’re too spoiled
and pugnacious and stupid. We’re
not the type to age with dignity; we’re
more likely to go deep into denial, getting
hair plugs, Hummers, and trophy
wives to stave off our fear of inevitable
decline. I see us acting more like Russia,
which, twenty
years after its own
ignominious collapse, is proud of its ruthless
thug of a president and invading little nations
on its border just to throw its
muscle around. I’m picturing President
Palin nuking Havanah and all the crewcut
cro-magnon dudes who like to chant “U!S!A!
U!S!A!” being, like, “Yeah! America
is back, motherfuckers!”
I've
largely deferred to the opinions of friends in this
week's statement for the
same reason
that I ended
up
drawing a cartoon
about my own ignorance and apathy: because
I know less about the economy than I do
about Gaussian
physics or Polynesian history. I knew too
little about the
economy
even to draw
the
stupidest, most simple-minded metaphor
about it.
My
lack of interest is so total that's it's
kind of suspicious, an active
avoidance rather than genuine indifference,
the kind of blind spot that in nightmares
is the
red flag
of repression.
This
incuriousity is especially glaring given
that I actually have some investments.
I have so
far made
no inquiries
of my broker
as to whether I have any money left at
all. I should probably
get around to asking since, if it were
to turn out that the cash in my checking account
at
this moment
represented
my total
personal worth, I would budget very differently.
On the other hand, I might well just elect
to blow it
all on
powerful drugs
or very beautiful call girls.
Speaking
of which, our donation button is directly
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