Betrayal and Making Hope

Thursday: “Have fun reading your articles and getting all steamed up,” was Marin’s comment as I went on about what I’d learned in twenty minutes of reading emails, while dressing Matteo for their exit out the front door to work and day care.

I was suffering from the realization that the so called “stimulus package” which congress and the president were having a lovefest over, was another instance of Naomi Wolf’s “disaster capitalism.” (Newer article from LA Times here). This is where any disaster, whether it’s Katrina or Iraq or 9/11 becomes an opportunity to give away billions to corporations which themselves are funding agents of the GOP and the Dems both.

On the “stimulus,” the Dems caved on bolstering food stamps and on extending unemployment benefits, the only two aspects of the bill which might have helped poor people, and also might have helped the economy, because the $600 bucks they’re going to give to me in tax rebates, and the tax breaks they’re going to give to businesses won’t show up in our spending patterns any time soon, if ever. At best, it’s hush money for the middle class, “disaster capitalist giveaway” for the rich, and something for Bush to go on about next week in the State of the Union. A hundred fifty billion so he has a talking point?

There was this: Bush was blocked from using this bill to make his tax cuts for the rich permanent. But if you look at the Dems today and contemplate next year, even in the best case scenario, they won’t take stands – they won’t get us out of Iraq, they won’t change the tax cuts for the rich, their health care proposals go nowhere. A couple articles are saying there will be no change in the bad things that have happened to our America no matter who makes it into the white house a year from this week.

Some folks believe the recession will be short. They aren’t the readers of “peak oil” prophets, such as John Howard Kunstler, who see this as the moment that we’ll look back on, years from now, when things suddenly turned grim, economically, politically, environmentally, socially, and personally.

And, under the nose of congress, the president this week signed an agreement with Iraq (not a treaty, which would have to be ratified by the Senate) to keep troops in Iraq for decades to come. Didn’t notice? This is the level of craziness going on. Do we have to honor Bush’s arrangement once he’s gone? People interviewed on NPR said, essentially, yes.

Meanwhile, I discovered myself on Wednesday taking two books on tape, one the original Pooh by A.A. Milne, back to the library without having listened to them. This used to be my refuge, listening to books, often kid books, while driving around town.

Along with my flagging literary interests, I took it to be a second ominous sign -- the dashed hopes of one of the most interesting black characters, De, in the final episode of “The Wire.” Somehow we found time to watch the first season in the past two weeks (the 5th and final season began a month ago). This HBO series is highly praised for vividly portraying the downward spiral of an American city through the lives of its people, poor, rich, workers, politicians, all.

The violence and sex on “The Wire” are minimal and not gratuitous, and Marin, who initially resisted the "cop" format, got drawn in. I loved it because I lived in ghetto Philly for 15 years, dealing on a weekly basis with the wonderful dialects, well-depicted poor people, and the stupidious city bureaucracy.

In the final episode of year one, one of the drug-running characters, De, who learns, from the cops when he's picked up with a kilo of heroin, of the brutal murder of an innocent kid ordered by his bosses. In a moment, he passionately realizes he wants to start his life over. The justice apparatus tries to respond to this, through a federal witness protection program, which stalls.

Meanwhile, his mother comes to visit him in jail, and plays the “family” card – his uncle (her brother) is running the huge drug operation, and her middle-class lifestyle depends on her son refusing to testify, and eating the time.

You see him looking down a corridor, past his mother, a defeated man, sucking up 20 years for possession. “If you don’t have family,” she had intoned, “what do you have?”

As it is written: “And Judas, with a kiss, turned him over to the authorities, for thirty pieces of silver.”

The final word, from John Howard Kunstler: “How are you are supposed to remain hopeful in the face of these enormous tasks. Here’s the plain truth, folks: Hope is not a consumer product. You have to generate your own hope. You do that by demonstrating to yourself that you are brave enough to face reality and competent enough to deal with the circumstances that it presents. How we will manage to uphold a decent society in the face of extraordinary change will depend on our creativity, our generosity, and our kindness, and I am confident that we can find these resources within our own hearts, and collectively in our communities.“