The Ponzi Scheme Presidency Bush's Legacy of Destruction
By Tom Engelhardt

It may finally be 2009, but in some ways, given these last years, it might as well be 800 BCE.

From the ninth to the seventh centuries BCE, the palace walls of the kings who ruled the Assyrian Empire were decorated with vast stone friezes, filled with enough dead bodies to sate any video-game maker and often depicting -- in almost comic strip-style -- various bloody royal victories and conquests. At least one of them shows Assyrian soldiers lopping off the heads of defeated enemies and piling them into pyramids for an early version of what, in the VCE (Vietnam Common Era) of the 1960s, Americans came to know as the "body count."

So I learned recently by wandering through a traveling exhibit of ancient Assyrian art from the British Museum. On the audio tour accompanying the show, one expert pointed out that Assyrian scribes, part of an impressive imperial bureaucracy, carefully counted those heads and recorded the numbers for the greater glory of the king (as, in earlier centuries, Egyptian scribes had recorded counts of severed hands for victorious Pharaohs).

Hand it to art museums. Is there anything stranger than wandering through one and locking eyes with a Vermeer lady, a Van Eyck portrait, or one of Rembrandt's burghers staring out at you across the centuries? What a reminder of the common humanity we share with the distant past. In a darker sense, it's no less a reminder of our kinship across time to spot a little pyramid of heads on a frieze, imagine an Assyrian scribe making his count, and -- eerily enough -- feel at home. What a measure of just how few miles "the march of civilization" (as my parents' generation once called it) has actually covered.

Prejudiced Toward War

Thank heavens the Nation magazine exists. Otherwise, subjects that should matter to us might simply disappear into the void, along with key aspects of our history. Recently, for instance, the magazine produced Nick Turse's major historical investigation, "A My Lai a Month," on the pattern of U.S. war crimes during the Vietnam War. Important and startling as that piece was, it's hard to imagine what other magazine might have carried it. In its latest issue, the Nation (with the help of the Nation Institute's Investigative Fund) turns to a more recent set of crimes that, until reporter A.C. Thompson investigated, few paid the slightest mind to.

It's appropriate that Thompson's shocking, must-read revelations of vigilante killings carried out against blacks in devastated New Orleans in 2005, "Katrina's Hidden Race War," began with a TomDispatch writer, the irrepressible Rebecca Solnit. On hearing of some of these murders while visiting New Orleans back in 2006, she went in search of someone who would report on them, and the rest is now, as they say, history.

For the last two years, Solnit has helped to close down this site for the holiday season. In December 2007, she laid out a twelve-book "secret library of hope" for TD readers. The year before, she wrote a wonderful "retrospective" on our time to come, "The Age of Mammals: Looking Back on the First Quarter of the Twenty-First Century." As (unfortunately) befits the closing moments of the Bush era and the carnage it let loose across the globe, her 2008 site-closing piece has a grimmer tinge to it. But perhaps there is something seasonally hopeful simply in acknowledging, as fully as we can, what these last murderous eight years have meant. (To listen to a TomDispatch audio interview in which Solnit discusses how the importance of the story of the New Orleans killings dawned on her, click here.) Tom

The Grinning Skull The Homicides You Didn't Hear About in Hurricane Katrina
By Rebecca Solnit

What do you do when you notice that there seems to have been a killing spree? While the national and international media were working themselves and much of the public into a frenzy about imaginary hordes of murderers, rapists, snipers, marauders, and general rampagers among the stranded crowds of mostly poor, mostly black people in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, a group of white men went on a shooting spree across the river.

Their criminal acts were no secret but they never became part of the official story. The media demonized the city's black population for crimes that turned out not to have happened, and the retractions were, as always, too little too late. At one point FEMA sent a refrigerated 18-wheeler to pick up what a colonel in the National Guard expected to be 200 bodies in New Orleans's Superdome, only to find six, including four who died naturally and a suicide. Meanwhile, the media never paid attention to the real rampage that took place openly across the river, even though there were corpses lying in unflooded streets and testimony everywhere you looked -- or I looked, anyway.

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2008-12-21T21:46:17-05:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175016 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175015 [Note for TomDispatch Readers: I've always been a sucker for lost worlds. As a matter of fact, right now I'm in the midst of historian Mary Beard's latest erudite volume, The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found. It's an exceedingly detailed history of what we don't -- and probably can't -- know about the best-known town in the Roman Empire. Unfortunately, I've never visited Pompeii and taken that deep dive into the stony pools of time. I did, however, steal/adapt a title from a bestselling nineteenth-century potboiler set in that buried town when I wrote a novel about my own world of 30 years and the future of the book, The Last Days of Publishing, back in 2003. As this post indicates, it was far more on target than even I imagined at the time. (You can read the first few Pompeii-esque pages by clicking here [pdf file] or check out reviews by clicking here.)

There will be one more post -- from the redoubtable Rebecca Solnit -- before TomDispatch shuts down until 2009, but I thought I might take this opportunity to offer a deep bow to the TD crew: the ever-efficient and inventive Joe Duax of the Nation Institute, without whom I'd be completely helpless; Christopher Holmes, with his laser copyediting eyes on the eternal nightshift in Tokyo; Tam Turse, regularly riding herd on and lassoing goofs of every sort; Rob Eshelman, audio impresario; the invaluable Nick Turse, there from the beginning; and, of course, all you TomDispatch readers whose letters, even when I don't have time to answer them, make life here worth living. Tom]

The Axe, the Book, and the Ad On Reading in an Age of Depression
By Tom Engelhardt

Worlds shudder and collapse all the time. There's no news in that. Just ask the Assyrians, the last emperor of the Han Dynasty, the final Romanoff, Napoleon, or that Ponzi-schemer Bernard Madoff. But when it seems to be happening to your world, well, that's a different kettle of fish. When you get the word, the call, the notice that you're a goner, or when your little world shudders, that's something else again.

Even if the call's not for you, but for a friend, an acquaintance, someone close enough so you can feel the ripples, that can do the trick. It did for me two weeks ago, when a close friend in my niche world of book publishing (at whose edge I've been perched these last 30-odd years) called to tell me that an editor we both admire had been perp-walked out of his office and summarily dismissed by the publisher he worked for. That's what now passes for politeness in the once "gentlemanly" world of books.

His fault, the sap, was doing good books. The sort of books that might actually make a modest difference in the universe, but will be read by no less modest audiences -- too modest for flailing, failing publishing conglomerates. If you were talking in terms of cars, his books would have been the equivalent of those tiny "smart cars" you see in increasing numbers, tucked into previously nonexistent parking spots on city streets, rather than the SUVs and pick-ups of the Big Three. It may be part of the future, but who cares? Not now -- and too bad for him.

It wasn't really him, of course. He was just a small fry, like most of us, in the bloated universe of entertainment. As with so many workers at the moment -- and it doesn't matter whether you're talking about the downturn in restaurant hires or the cuts made by that sports titan, the National Football League (about 150 jobs), or the public radio oufit NPR (64 jobs, two shows) -- his firing was a by-product of economic and funding catastrophes elsewhere.

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2008-12-17T16:19:30-05:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175015 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175014 Once upon a time, Detroit was known as "the arsenal of Democracy" because the city's big three automakers converted so quickly from turning out civilian vehicles to producing the tanks and trucks that "helped win World War II" (and then "lent their technology to aircraft and ship manufacturing" as well). Now, the same three companies are simply beggars. Whether they are capable today of transforming themselves, as an Obama administration might wish, into an "arsenal for a green future" is certainly an open question. TomDispatch regular Nick Turse, author of the groundbreaking book The Complex on the militarization of American daily life, recalls a Cold War era in which many corporations producing the big-ticket items of the consumer economy turned themselves into literal arsenals, churning out weaponry of every sort. Now, with that consumer economy on the skids, he wonders whether civilian companies may again opt to become "arsenals" for the Pentagon. Tom

A Recipe For Corporate Success in Tough Times? SaladShooters, Adult Diapers, and Tactical Ammo
By Nick Turse

Is it possible that one of the Pentagon's contractors has a tripartite business model for our tough economic times: one division that specializes in crock-pots, another in adult diapers, and a third in medium caliber tactical ammunition? Can the maker of the SaladShooter, a hand-held electric shredder/dicer that hacks up and fires out sliced veggies, really be a tops arms manufacturer? Could a company that produces the Pizzazz Pizza Oven also be a merchant of death? And could this company be a model for success in an economy heading for the bottom?

Once upon a time, the military-industrial complex was loaded with household-name companies like General Motors, Ford, and Dow Chemical, that produced weapons systems and what arms expert Eric Prokosch has called, "the technology of killing." Over the years, for economic as well as public relations reasons, many of these firms got out of the business of creating lethal technologies, even while remaining Department of Defense (DoD) contractors.

The military-corporate complex of today is still filled with familiar names from our consumer culture, including defense contractors like iPod-maker Apple, cocoa giant Nestle, ketchup producer Heinz, and chocolate bar maker Hershey, not to speak of Tyson Foods, Procter & Gamble, and the Walt Disney Company. But while they may provide the everyday products that allow the military to function, make war, and carry out foreign occupations, most such civilian firms no longer dabble in actual arms manufacture.

Whirlpool: Then and Now

Take the Whirlpool Corporation, which bills itself as "the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances" and boasts annual sales of more than $19 billion to consumers in more than 170 countries. Whirlpool was recently recognized as "one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute." The company also professes a "strong" belief in "ethical values" that dates back almost 100 years to founders who believed "there is no right way to do a wrong thing."

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2008-12-15T16:39:58-05:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175014 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175013 The single omnipresent historical reference in the American media immediately in the wake of September 11, 2001, was, of course, "Pearl Harbor" -- and those code words for it, "infamy" and "day of infamy," splashed in mile-high letters across the front pages of papers. What we had experienced, it was commonly said then, was "the Pearl Harbor of the 21st century." And with that image of the Japanese attack that began the Second World War for the United States went powerful, if only half-conscious, memories of how that war ended, of nuclear holocaust, and so the place where the World Trade Center towers went down was promptly dubbed "Ground Zero," previously a term reserved for the spot where an atomic blast took place.

Naturally, the idea that 9/11 was an "act of war," and that we were "at war," quickly and heavily promoted by the Bush administration, followed; and all of this would have been appropriate to a surprise attack by a nuclear-armed state, but not to an assault by 19 terrorists backed by a ragtag organization spread from Hamburg, Germany, to the backlands of Afghanistan. That the framework for taking in what had happened that day was so thoroughly askew mattered not a whit to most Americans at that time; and the rest, including the President's "Global War on Terror," came easily, if disastrously, in its wake. Now, "9/11" has become the "Pearl Harbor" of the twenty-first century, the antecedent and analogy of choice, and so, not surprisingly, it was on all but a few media lips, during the recent massacre and siege in Mumbai, India.

Arundhati Roy, the Indian activist and author of the prize-winning novel The God of Small Things, was one of the earliest, strongest, sanest voices on this planet of ours to take on George W. Bush and his Global War on Terror. "The freshest voice on Earth," I called her back in 2003. She was an inspiration. Now, she turns to the events in her own country, in Mumbai, and explains just why using 9/11 as the analogy of choice there, as we once used "Pearl Harbor" here, will lead in no less terrible directions.

The piece that follows was published by the superb magazine Outlook India, which is sharing it with TomDispatch.com. Tom

9 Is Not 11 (And November Isn't September)
By Arundhati Roy

We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11." And like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before.

As tension in the region builds, U.S. Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that, if it didn't act fast to arrest the "bad guys," he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11.

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2008-12-12T14:36:36-05:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175013 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175012 On Sunday, I went to a memorial for Studs Terkel, that human dynamo, our nation's greatest listener and talker, the one person I just couldn't imagine dying. After all, the man wrote his classic oral history of death, Will the Circle Be Unbroken? at 89, and only then did he do his oral history of hope, Hope Dies Last. The celebration of his life went on for almost two and a half hours. Everyone on stage had a classic story about the guy, one better than the next, and Studs would have been thrilled that so many people talked at such length about him. But he wouldn't have stayed. Half an hour into the event, he would have been out the door, across the street, and into the nearest bar, asking people about their lives. And the amazing thing is this: they would have been spilling their guts. He could make a stone talk -- and not only that, but tell a story of stone-ness that no one had ever heard before or even imagined a stone might tell. His death is like an archive of what was best in America closing; his legacy lies in oral histories that will inform the generations.

Unfortunately, his remarkable oral history of the Great Depression, Hard Times, may prove all too hauntingly relevant to our moment. In fact, in the midst of the ceremonies, the radio host Laura Flanders pointed out that, in Studs's beloved Chicago, a group of more than 200 workers from United Electrical union local 1110 were sitting in at their factory. After the Bank of America had cut the company off from operating credit, the execs of Republic Windows and Doors shut the plant for good on just three days notice without offering severance pay. The workers responded by demanding some justice and "blocking the removal of any assets from the plant" until they got their "rightful benefits." Shades of the 1930s! As John Nichols of the Nation writes, "[They] are conducting the contemporary equivalent of the 1930s sit-down strikes that led to the rapid expansion of union recognition nationwide and empowered the Roosevelt administration to enact more equitable labor laws. And, just as in the thirties, they are objecting to policies that put banks ahead of workers; stickers worn by the UE sit-down strikers read: 'You got bailed out, we got sold out.'"

If this isn't a message from and about a changing nation, I don't know what is. And, by the way, the fact that the President-elect supported their demands at a news conference on Sunday indicates not just that change has indeed occurred, but that messages sent from the bottom en masse don't go unnoticed by canny politicians at the top.

Until this second, who would have predicted such a thing? And who can imagine what version of hard times we will face? All I know is that, if Studs, who made it to 96, to the verge of the historic election of Barack Obama, were alive today, he would have recognized a moment of hope when he saw it and made a beeline for Republic Windows and Doors, tape recorder in hand. He was, after all, a man who knew that anyone can hope in good times, but that, in bad times, to feel hopeful you have to act, you have to take a step, even on an unknown path. And he was a man who also would have taken it for granted that the lives of the workers in that Chicago factory were at least as complex, deep, dark, surprising, fascinating, confusing, and remarkable as any among Washington's elite or the movers and shakers (down) of Wall Street.

In one of Studs's interviews, the chief of the trauma unit at a Chicago hospital, talking about how a doctor should deal with the family of a young person who has just died traumatically, says that, when he introduces himself, "they won't even remember my name. Sit them down. Sit down with them. Look into their eyes. If you can, hold on to them and say, 'it's bad news.' And they'll say, 'Is he dead?' Or they just look at you. You have to use the word, you have to say it: 'He's dead.' If you say he's 'expired,' he's 'passed away,' they don't hear that It's very important to put yourself into their shoes, but you've got to say the word 'dead.' You've got to give them the finality of it."

Well, Studs is dead. And it's hard times without him.

Ira Chernus, TomDispatch regular, who is now, appropriately enough, writing a book on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, gives some thought below to what those who want to act, to make change, in this hard-times moment can learn from the canniest of politicians -- FDR and Barack Obama. Tom

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2008-12-09T16:49:02-05:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175012 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175011 [Note to TomDispatch readers: Here we are nearing the end of the year. Just a reminder: If you're getting ready for a little pre-2009 giving in tough times, why not hit the "Resist Empire. Support TomDispatch" button to the right of the site's main screen and consider bulking up TD a little. Every dollar is appreciated.

And while you're at it, if you're in the mood for holiday book gifts, another way to support the site and its authors is to check out the list of TomDispatch-inspired books to the left of the main screen (scroll down). They range from this year's The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire, a best-of collection that will help make sense of this moment, to Michael Schwartz's superb just-published War Without End, which captures the hell Bush & Co. drove Iraq (and the U.S.) into, Nick Turse's The Complex, a groundbreaking book on how our daily lives have been militarized, and -- for a dash of pure hope -- Rebecca Solnit's classic volume, Hope in the Dark. Or if you want to know a little more about American triumphalism and how it crashed and burned twice in a matter of decades, check out my own recently updated The End of Victory Culture. Tom]

The Imperial Transition 44, The Prequel
By Tom Engelhardt

Did you know that the IBM Center for the Business of Government hosts a "Presidential Transition" blog; that the Council on Foreign Relations has its own "Transition Blog: The New Administration"; and that the American University School of Communication has a "Transition Tracker" website? The National Journal offers its online readers a comprehensive "Lost in Transition" site to help them "navigate the presidential handover," including a "short list," offering not only the president-elect's key recent appointments, but also a series of not-so-short lists of those still believed to be in contention for as-yet-unfilled jobs. Think of all this as Entertainment Weekly married to People Magazine for post-election political junkies.

Newsweek features "powering up" ("blogging the transition"); the policy-wonk website Politico.com offers Politico 44 ("a living diary of the Obama presidency"); and Public Citizen has "Becoming 44," with the usual lists of appointees, possible appointees, but -- for the junkie who wants everything -- "bundler transition team members" and "lobbyist and bundler appointees" as well. (For those who want to know, for instance, White House Social Secretary-designate Desiree Roberts bundled at least $200,000 for the Obama campaign.)

The New York Times has gone whole hog at "The New Team" section of its website, where there are scads of little bios of appointees, as well as prospective appointees -- including what each individual will "bring to the job," how each is "linked to Mr. Obama," and what negatives each carries as "baggage." Think of it as a scorecard for transition junkies. The Washington Post, whose official beat is, of course, Washington D.C. über alles, has its "44: The Obama Presidency, A Transition to Power," where, in case you're planning to make a night of it on January 20th, you can keep up to date on that seasonal must-subject, the upcoming inaugural balls. And not to be outdone, the transitioning Obama transition crew has its own mega-transition site, Change.gov.

Earliest, Biggest, Fastest

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2008-12-07T20:50:14-05:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175011 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175010 [Note for Readers: To listen to a TomDispatch audio interview with journalist Anand Gopal about the difficulties involved in reporting from Afghanistan, click here.]

Just when the Obama presidency-to-be was revving up to introduce its new national security "team" and reformulate U.S. policy in Afghanistan and the Pakistani border regions, the Afghan War ratcheted up a notch -- and not because there was another missile strike from an American drone aircraft in the Pakistani tribal borderlands, or because yet more civilians died in U.S. military operations, or even because attacks by "the Taliban" rose yet again to new heights.

No, that ratcheting up occurred in Mumbai, India, where the planners of the murderous rampage by a crew of Kashmiri militants decided that stirring up a good old face-off between the two edgy nuclear powers of the subcontinent would be advantageous. A precision operation that managed to slaughter just about anyone in sight (including Indian Muslims) now threatens to change the nature of the Afghan War, heat up the conflict in Kashmir, and embroil the region in an even wider catastrophe, ending a period of easing tensions between India and Pakistan. Already Pakistan is threatening to transfer up to 100,000 troops from the borderlands with Afghanistan to the Indian border.

As Paul Woodward of the War in Context website wrote, "[W]hat we witnessed was a major move on President-elect Obama's chessboard of foreign policy even before he'd had a chance to lay a finger on any of the pieces." Tony Karon caught the essence of the larger political moment this way: "Provoking India would not only realign the interests of the Pakistani military and the Islamists, it would threaten U.S. efforts to reorient the Pakistani military towards domestic counterinsurgency, and to broker a deeper rapprochement with India -- a development U.S. analysts believe is key to resolving the conflict in Afghanistan."

In other words, the already expanding war in Afghanistan -- American supply routes through the Khyber Pass, for instance, have recently been endangered -- just expanded a little (or possibly a lot) more. It's a sobering reminder of a world that may be beyond the control of any national security team. And even as this occurs, what we here know about "the other side" in Afghanistan, generally known as "the Taliban," is modest indeed. Fortunately, Anand Gopal, a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, offers his second vividly reported post for TomDispatch, an on-the-ground look at who the Taliban -- "a slippery movement that morphs from district to district" -- really are. This timely piece represents a joint project of TomDispatch.com and the Nation Magazine, where a shorter version appears in print. Tom

Who Are the Taliban? The Afghan War Deciphered
By Anand Gopal

[This piece is a joint project of TomDispatch.com and the Nation Magazine, where a shorter version appears in print.]

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2008-12-04T10:55:39-05:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175010 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175009 Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water

After all, that massive U.S. air attack on Iran that anti-imperial critics long expected to arrive, that Seymour Hersh wrote about, that so many feared, never happened and, with Barack Obama's election, should certainly have been put to rest in a deep grave for all eternity. But don't underestimate the neocons, or their ability to reconfigure themselves for a Democratic administration. Robert Dreyfuss, author of Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, who also produces The Dreyfuss Report for the Nation magazine's website, offers up some tantalizing clues to their possible future resurrection -- and some altogether eerie connections between neocon Washington and the future Obama team.

To give Dreyfuss his creds, only the other day the Wall Street Journal actually began an editorial on the new Obama national security "team" by attacking an analysis Dreyfuss had done of it the previous week. ("The names floated for Barack Obama's national security team 'are drawn exclusively from conservative, centrist and pro-military circles without even a single -- yes, not one! -- chosen to represent the antiwar wing of the Democratic party.' In his plaintive post this week on the Nation magazine's Web site, Robert Dreyfuss indulges in the political left's wonderful talent for overstatement. But who are we to interfere with his despair?") Given their right-wing proclivities, the Journal's editorial writers then offer the equivalent of high praise for Obama's choices: "So far," they conclude, "on security, not bad." That should make just about anyone who voted for Obama to change American global policy in significant ways pause a moment for reflection.

And the Journal isn't alone. Other Republicans are, according to the Times of London, already "showering praise on these selections. Senator Lindsey Graham said that Mr Gates, President Bush's Defense Secretary, had 'led us through difficult times in Iraq' and that Mrs Clinton had a 'little harder line' than Mr Obama on foreign policy." The dark prince of neocons Richard Perle commented, "I'm relieved... Contrary to expectations, I don't think we would see a lot of change."

Give it a year and a little Iranian, American, and Israeli intransigence and who knows what scenarios might arise. In the meantime, keep your eyes on the neocons. Like vampires of legend, barring a stake through the heart, they arrive on the scene as soon as darkness sets in. Tom

Still Preparing to Attack Iran The Neoconservatives in the Obama Era
By Robert Dreyfuss

What, exactly, does Barack Obama's mild-mannered choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services, former Senator Tom Daschle, have to do with neocons who want to bomb Iran?

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2008-12-02T17:02:40-05:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175009 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175008 If you want to catch something of the fears and hopes of Americans right now, go to News.Google.com and try searching for a few words. For instance, put in "FDR" -- the well-known initials of the man who was president four times and took America through the Great Depression and all but the last months of World War II -- and endless screens of references pop up.

The Nation and the National Review have both devoted space to him. Paul Krugman and George Will both thought this was the moment to focus on him. Checking out the headlines you might think that the intervening sixty-four years since his death had simply vanished: ("Will FDR Inspire Obama?" "Obama's jobs plan could echo FDR's," "Clinton's potential pitfalls seen in FDR's secretary of State," Channeling FDR," "FDR saved capitalism -- now it's Obama's turn," and so on); headlines galore, not to speak of that Time Magazine "Obama as FDR?" cover.

Or, if you have another moment, try "the New Deal," or even the 2008 Obama version of the same,"the new New Deal"; or, if you really want to get a sense of the moment, try "since the Great Depression," which now seems to be embedded in any article about the present economic situation -- as in the "worst crisis since the Great Depression," or "the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression," or even "the most severe credit crunch since the Great Depression." It's a phrase that hovers between horror and euphemism, between the urge to invoke the word "depression" for our moment and an almost superstitious fear of doing so.

Historian Steve Fraser, author of Wall Street: America's Dream Palace, has been writing at TomDispatch about both the Great Depression and the possibility of a modern version of the same for some time. Now, he returns to the dawn of the Rooseveltian era to offer a unique and telling comparison -- between FDR's expansive, experimental "brain trust" and Obama's new "team of rivals." In his usual fashion, he raises the truly pregnant question: What kind of new administration could actually get beyond Roosevelt's era as well as our own staggering disaster, leaving "the bailout state" behind us? Tom

Beyond the Bailout State Roosevelt's Brain Trust vs Obama's Brainiacs
By Steve Fraser

On a December day in 1932, with the country prostrate under the weight of the Great Depression, ex-president Calvin Coolidge -- who had presided over the reckless stock market boom of the Jazz Age Twenties (and famously declaimed that "the business of America is business") -- confided to a friend: "We are in a new era to which I do not belong." He punctuated those words, a few weeks later, by dying.

A similar premonition grips the popular imagination today. A new era beckons. No person has been more responsible for arousing that expectation than President-elect Barack Obama. From beginning to end, his presidential campaign was born aloft by invocations of the "fierce urgency of now," by "change we can believe in," by "yes, we can!" and by the obvious significance of his race and generation. Not surprisingly then, as the gravity of the national economic calamity has become terrifyingly clearer, yearnings for salvation have attached themselves ever more firmly to the incoming administration.

]]> Tom Engelhardt 2008-12-01T10:20:46-05:00 http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=175008