America’s Economic Crisis Is Merely A Symptom Of A Greatest Crisis To Come.

The Road To Civil War. Part One.

The House’s failure Monday to pass the historic federal bailout bill is a failure of our government to do its most essential job: protect the people it was elected to represent. This was not democracy in action. This was a concerted, organized revolt against a perceived bi-partisan success by a small group of truculent Republicans and yes, some Democrats as well, who were more concerned with public perception, and fear that a “yes” vote would mean losing their jobs, than with doing the people’s business in an effective, efficient, responsible, manner. No doubt, the job losses will come, not only for them, but for millions of Americans who will suffer because every branch of our society failed in its duty to understand and present properly the true facts of the proposed financial bill, and its impact on the American and world markets.

Despite its ineptitude, or perhaps because of it, Congress knows that 34 days before an election it cannot go on vacation, without a solution in place to the gravest financial, indeed, gravest crisis, period, we have seen since the Great Depression. The problem is that few in Congress understand this economic crisis. Granted, few, if any, anywhere, truly do. But, as Tom Friedman wrote in today’s New York Times,

“We have House members, many of whom I suspect can’t balance their own checkbooks, rejecting a complex rescue package because some voters, whom I fear also don’t understand, swamped them with phone calls.”

This is the crux of a larger issue: Our society has become too complex and out-of-control for anyone to understand what is holding it together and driving it. Worse, overall, Americans are becoming less, not more, intelligent and educated, “reading and understanding what they read less as well”. We have a sitting president and a current vice presidential candidate who clearly do not read newspapers. When asked in an interview with Katie Couric, which aired Monday, what sources she uses to keep herself up to date, Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate, could not name one newspaper or magazine or television news show she follows to “stay informed and to understand the world”.

Some Conservative Republicans are so in love with their faith that the bible, or their interpretation of the bible, has replaced the news for them. Republicans are so intent on allowing our children to wallow in religion that they want to dismantle the US Department of Education, teach Creationism in schools, and elect a president who had to get his father, an Admiral, to help him get into military college, where he subsequently graduated fifth from the bottom of his class. John McCain acknowledges this, and yet chose a vice-presidential candidate who took six years and five colleges to get her degree. Obviously, intelligence and education are not pre-requisites to the Republicans. Their response? The liberal, elite left and the liberal, elite media don’t love America. But whose America?