American Patrol

I was right in the middle of my pre-breakfast coffee and cigarettes ritual on Monday when a brief remark on Marketplace Morning caught my ear, worked its way up to my brain, and managed to stay there for the rest of the day. Reporting on declining auto sales, Marketplace’s Amy Scott noted that for the first time in decades the rate of new car sales in the US had fallen well below the level necessary to replace the number of cars scrapped, totaled, or otherwise removed from service, meaning a net decrease in the number of cars on the road of some 2,000,000 vehicles. “Fewer cars and trucks on the roads may sound good for the planet,” she said. “For the economy, not so much.”

It was probably the comparatively low levels of “lifestyle chemicals” in my bloodstream, but at the time that statement struck me as being the damnedest thing I had heard in ages. The concept itself wasn’t so unusual, really: its inverse, “good for the economy, for the planet, not so much” is actually a pretty good summation of world economic history since the Industrial Revolution. At this particular moment in that history, however, with the world economy having been slapped silly by the invisible hand of the free market and the likelihood of ruin, both economic and ecological, staring us full in the face, what might have passed as a mere cynical commonplace sounded a lot like a full blown obscenity. I suspect that there are many more, and that I'll likely as not encounter them all before this era passes.

Though the incoming President has promised change, it is difficult to know two weeks before his swearing in exactly what shape that change will take. I suspect that a great deal of that change will have to take place between the ears of our fellow citizens before change manifests politically in any meaningful way. If "economic recovery" is going to mean anything more than the restoration of the corrupt and unsustainable practices that got us to this juncture in the first place, we are going to have to individually and collectively examine our assumptions and disgorge as much of the mental bullshit that has allowed us to carry on as if nothing was wrong for this last little while as we possibly can.

In short, we are going to have to think. Our election of a President who is both articulate and willing to address us as adults is a hopeful sign that perhaps we can pull it off. The thousand years of history before that, not so much.

As frustrating as it's been to watch Barack Obama go through his powerless pre-Presidency, it has nonetheless been very satisfying indeed to watch him deliver the odd well-placed blow. Case in point-- the transition team's response to the outrage and criticism leveled against Obama's proposed nomination of Leon Panetta to run the CIA by the incoming and outgoing heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein(D-CA) and Jay Rockefeller(D-WV)following the incoming administration's failure to consult them on the choice. With the exception of Vice President Biden's half-assed non-apology, which seemed to be delivered more out of a surfeit of leftover Senatorial collegiality than any sincere sense of regret, Feinstein and Rockefeller have been treated by the President Elect and his surrogates with all due respect. Given their status as two of the most active apologists for and enablers of the worst abuses of the Bush administration, not to mention the utter failure of their leadership in the area of Senatorial oversight, that amounts to damn little respect indeed.

Feinstein, presumably having been made aware of which side of the bread was going to be getting the jam going forward, announced this afternoon that she would support the Panetta nomination after all. Senator Rockefeller has presumably taken his ball and gone home. Neither is likely to overestimate his/her importance in quite this way again.

Nicely played, Mr President Elect....