The New York Times’ Frank Rich: Obama is right—the people are to blame

[dcsmart]

Barack Obama's inauguration has brought out the worst in a good many people, especially from within the environs of American liberalism. The liberal pundits either invent an imaginary ‘progressive' Obama or come forward to express agreement with his fundamentally right-wing views and policies.

In his weekly comment Sunday, New York Times columnist Frank Rich, taking his cue from Obama's inauguration speech, asserts that the American people share the blame for the financial crisis. Rich writes that "Obama wasn't just rebuking the outgoing administration. He was delicately but unmistakably calling out the rest of us who went along for the ride as America swerved into the dangerous place we find ourselves now."

Rich continues: "Feckless as it was for Bush to ask Americans to go shopping after 9/11, we all too enthusiastically followed his lead, whether we were wealthy, working-class or in between. We spent a decade feasting on easy money, don't-pay-as-you-go consumerism and a metastasizing celebrity culture."

After enumerating a number of crimes of the financial elite, Rich returns to his theme: "In less lofty precincts of the American economic spectrum, the numbers may be different but the ethos has often been similar... egular Americans took on all kinds of debt wildly disproportionate to their assets and income. The nearly $1 trillion in unpaid credit-card balances is now on deck to be the next big crash."

He notes that in his inaugural speech Obama issued a "somber" call for sacrifice, and, after citing the president's reference to "workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job," Rich adds, "There will be-there must be-far larger sacrifices in that vein yet to come." He concludes: "While it's become a Beltway cliché that America's new young president has yet to be tested, it is past time for us to realize that our own test is also about to begin."

This is extraordinary stuff. Aside from its sycophancy and the excuses it offers for Obama's banal and empty speech, Rich's column gives genuine voice to the sentiments of selfish, upper-middle-class circles.

(New York Times columnists couldn't agree on the literary quality of Obama's inaugural. While Rich headlined his piece "No Time for Poetry" and argued that "this speech was austere, not pretty," Times op-ed writer Stanley Fish opined that Obama "carries us from meditative bead to meditative bead, and invites us to contemplate." The prose style, Fish tells us, "lends itself to leisurely and loving study." While the aesthetic evaluations differ, there is a similar degree of groveling in both cases.)

According to Rich and his ilk, the American people share responsibility for the policies of the financial elite. Presumably then, the various equally guilty social elements should all have benefited.

In reality, the American working class has suffered a protracted, decades-long decline in its social position, while the very rich have engorged themselves on the nation's wealth, much of it by semi-criminal means, opening up a vast social chasm.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/rich-j26.shtml

[Crazy Dave]

1. A lot of people had to use credit as their wages were cut and health costs rose

The statistic nobody likes to use or they deny exists.

[DBoon]

3. other countries have a social safety net

We have credit.

They have subsidized education.

We have privatized student loans

They have government health care

We go into debt and then bankruptcy for cancer treatment that keeps us alive

They have subsidized housing

We borrow to make rent payments

They have public transit

We have car loans

[Crazy Dave]

4. Here only the banks and large political contributers get those types of safety nets

[nxylas]

7. "But they all have cable TV and cellphones"

That's the usual RW argument. If they just lived in corrugated iron shanties, they could easily afford health insurance. So it's all the fault of the poor. Fucked up, I know, but that's the way these people think.

[LoZoccolo]

2. I'm glad the World Socialist Web Site published this article.

That way, people can't accuse Obama of being a socialist. :woohoo:

Sister Souljah moment yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes!

[dcsmart]

5. your are right

most of the socialist sites, WSWS, Socialist Worker, and Workers world, to name a few, would never consider him a socialist. in fact, they are not real fans at all. they see him as part of the corporate-capitalism machine. so, if the socialists are not claiming him, then those who do accuse him of being a socialist are even more full of crap. WSWS has published many articles critical of obama. i do not always agree with them, but it good to read opposing sides that are not republican.

[dionysus]

6. have a nice, short stay comrade!!

:hi:

[NorCalDem]

8. To be fair...

the American people DO deserve a ton of the blame for the financial meltdown we find ourselves in. Many were asleep at the wheel, content with bread and circuses. There are many of saw this coming, or refused to be swept up in all of it, and now unfortunately we're all suffering together. But to try and pretend like the American people are guiltfree in this would be irresponsible. Yes, we probably deserve less of the blame than Wall Street (actually, we deserve MUCH LESS of the blame than Wall Street), but if we do not use this opportunity to learn HOW and WHY we allowed ourselves to be taken advantage of, then future morally bankrupt investors will fleece the next generation too!