Populist Rage? ...Never Mind....Joe Klein

[Jennicut]

Swampland - TIME.com
Monday, March 23, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Populist Rage? ...Never Mind
Posted by Joe Klein

A certain newsmagazine--hint: not this one--has put Populist Rage on its cover this week and features a series of essays, several quite good, about all the fury churning out there in pitchfork land. I suppose that there is a fair amount of anger about, especially with stories like this one popping up on an almost daily basis. I certainly loved every minute of Jon Stewart's takedown of Jim Cramer. It got to the heart of the crime: selling, and insuring--and making huge, bonus-driven fortunes off on--piles of mortgages that were bound to go unpaid is a Ponzi fantasy, of Madoffian enormity, even if each of those mortgages represents an actual home that can, and will, eventually, be resold.

So, yes, people are "angry" at Wall Street. They are also "angry" at Octomom. I wonder if the depth and quality of those two rages differ--or is this all just a television show? I mean, how many demonstrations, how many economic riots, have there been? There have been real free-for-alls, featuring real violence and bloodshed, in places like China, where the level of societal unfairness and desperation makes our own not-insignificant inequities seem like a workers' paradise. There used to be economic riots and marches here--back in the Great Depression, and further back in the populist era of the late 19th century. But none lately. There doesn't even seem to be significant movement in the polls, which are our own, latter-day way of marching on Washington.

There is a real crisis out there. It has existed for a while. It has been spreading slowly as factory after factory has shut down, as the gap between rich and poor ballooned, as the rich found ways to get richer betting on exotic financial instruments with all the economic substance of a roulette wheel, as the middle class found it harder to pay for college, for health care, for gasoline.

But most of the anger we see and hear comes from people who are paid to be angry, on cue, on cable television--as opposed to people with actual grievacnes. Suddenly, the White House press corps goes barking mad over the AIG Bonuses. It is said that the bonuses are an aspect of the bust that the "public" can understand; in truth, the bonuses are an aspect of the bust that reporters can understand. Suddenly, the Obama Administration has a "crisis." The President has to go on television and act as if he's angry, even though he knows these bonuses are the tiniest outcropping of outrageousness. (I mean, AIG insured mortgage-backed instruments that any qualified CPA could have seen were as solid as a soap bubble and thereby came close to bringing down the world's financial system--that's outrageous.)

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/03/23/populist-rage-never-mind/

I so agree with Joe. We are all so "outraged" thanks to the media. Funny thing is they never really show you much in the way of substance. So simple minded. We are angry but nothing is explained in any detail to us.

[Uzybone]

1. This is what I've been sayong

all this talk of pitchforks and torches, people really don't care that much. I guarantee you there is more interest in the NCAA tournament than there is the AIG bonuses. It was typical cable frenzy.

[Jennicut]

2. Its important that these financial "wizards" are complete a holes and screwed us

but they tried to play it like it was an Obama crisis....the public was gonna go populist on his ass! Not really. Simmering anger but not outright pitchforks. That was the media.

[FrenchieCat]

4. It wasn't rage against Obama, and couldn't have been.....

The bulk of the AIG money was given to them by the BUSH white house. When you are looking at what those fuckers did, how can you be upset at the new president. Wouldn't make sense.

Sure they tried. But it ended up just like the Blago bullshit in the end. A great big FAIL!

[FrenchieCat]

3. We called it a while ago......Manufactured outrage can't be substained....

it needed to be organic, and it wasn't.

I'm sure they are back to the drawing board as we speak.

The latest outrage...."He's overexposed"!

[RoyGBiv]

5. We're a nation of keyboard warriors ...

And before it comes, yes, I know we have a sizable sampling of genuinely activists individuals here, and I also know far too many of them come back with stories of being disappointed at the turnout or, ever the optimists, happy with the turnout considering that there'd been short notice, and it was a Saturday afternoon with the sun shining, and the (insert favorite sports team, reality television program, Special Event) was on the TeeVee.

But we rage ... OH do we rage on Twitter or Facebook or DU or Kos ... or some random thread buried deep in the bowls of a CNN page.

Rage, rage against the dying of the electrons.

The age of telecommunications and wide access to the Internet has allowed us opportunities like never before. It has also offered us an outlet, an excuse that does not require we mess up our hair or get out of our pajamas or go outside if it's too cold/hot or raining or whatever.

Yes, there's a real crisis out there and real rage, but we're spent after dinner, playing WoW for a few hours, then banging out our grievances on a piece of plastic connected to some wires and silicon that lets others know just how angry we are.

[Jennicut]

6. So true. We get angry but not many people actually participate in

fixing things. The great thing about Obama is how much he got people involved like never before and how he keeps communicating to the American people. Having a dialog with us instead of with just the media. Many here at DU are so commendable because the way we volunteer here and get involved.

[ShortnFiery]

7. It's a GOOD Start. Now we must get up and act in our own spheres concurrently.

:thumbsup:

[RoyGBiv]

9. Within our own spheres ...

An apt, excellent phrase to use.

Too many get caught up in the archetype of the "March on Washington" or some such thing.

Harvey Milk, to use a good example, started out on his own block. What people can do just by talking to their neighbors or agitating in a local neighborhood can be boundless.

[KittyWampus]

8. #1. We've been trained to take our anger out on other little people, not the culprets.

#2. We've been trained to feel impotent and inured to the corruption
#3. Even if we were out protesting, CNN wouldn't show it or would focus on the idiots breaking windows and/or lie about how many people showed up