How America’s Demented Politics Let The GOP Off The Hook For Their Giant Mess

Bill Moyers & Thomas Frank: How America’s Demented Politics Let the GOP Off the Hook for Their Giant Mess

By Bill Moyers and Thomas Frank, Bill Moyers Journal. Posted January 19, 2010.

Bill Moyers interviews Thomas Frank on how our short attention span has allowed conservatives to escape blame for their role in the economic meltdown.

Editor’s note: In the following interview Bill Moyers and Thomas Frank, author of “What’s the Matter With Kansas” and “The Wrecking Crew,” talk about why conservatives can get away with blaming Obama for the past decade of conservative failures.

Bill Moyers: There were hands in the air in Washington this week, but it wasn’t a stickup. The new Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, appointed by Congress to find out how America got rolled, began hearings this week. These four are not the victims of one of the greatest bank heists in history – they’re the perpetrators, bankers so sleek and crafty they got off with the loot in broad daylight, and then sweet talked the government into taxing us to pay it back.

Watching that scene on the opening day of the hearings, it was hard enough to believe that almost a year has passed since Barack Obama raised his hand, too — taking the oath of office to become our 44th President. Even harder to remember what America looked like before Obama, because we’ve also been robbed of memory, assaulted by what the Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz described as a “fantastic proliferation of mass media.” We live in a time “characterized by a refusal to remember.” Inconvenient facts simply disappear down the memory hole, as in George Orwell’s novel, “1984.”

President Obama’s made plenty of mistakes during his first year, and we’ve critiqued them frequently here on the JOURNAL, but hardly anyone talks any more about what happened in the years before. He inherited from George W. Bush the biggest financial debacle since the Great Depression, along with two unpopular and costly wars, and a dysfunctional and demoralized government.

It’s important to remember those years, a time that has been characterized by the historian Thomas Frank, as “A Low, Dishonest Decade.” He’s here to talk about them with me. Thomas Frank is editor of the recently relaunched BAFFLER magazine, a literary journal; a contributing editor of HARPER’S; a weekly columnist for THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; and the author of ONE MARKET UNDER GOD, the bestselling WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? and his latest bestseller, THE WRECKING CREW, now out in paperback. Good to have you back.

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Your Health Care Sucks!

Over the weekend, I took a rainy walk down Wall Street and through the financial district in lower Manhattan. As I navigated my way across the busy intersections and between the arrays of decorative sidewalk bollards, I noticed something really strange.

No protesters.

None, despite the fact that within that very space, the near destruction of the world economy was detonated, igniting one of the deepest recessions in American history and accompanied by 500,000 job losses every month.

Not only was the district free of protesters, but I spotted a gaggle of grinning tourists merrily gathered on and around the famous “Charging Bull” statue. One woman was having her picture taken while crouched down and cupping the bull’s gigantic watermelon-sized brass testicles. Actually, you could say that there was at least one tea bagger downtown. But, you know, the wrong kind.

As I marveled at the incongruous serenity of the financial district, I couldn’t help but to wonder if all of this talk about massive job losses and a near-meltdown was an elaborate hoax, or whether Americans by-in-large simply don’t give a rip, choosing instead to continue on their merry way, acquiescing to a failed system rather than lashing out against the horrors of deregulatory Reaganomics, and, consequently, taking action against the real killers. In other words, while political participation appears to be cresting a wave, there’s still a considerable level of apathy about demanding accountability from the crooks who nearly screwed us all.

This apathy is especially evident in the health care crisis.

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