I Don't Understand the Parisians

This will not be the first time I have noted that I began this blog with no intention of providing social or political commentary. Until this year, I had a general lack of interest in politics, a lack of interest I developed in college. My time at Columbia was in many ways a time of turning inward; I was so consumed with trying to figure out who I was that I largely lost interest in the wider world around me. Politics seemed incapable of providing any wisdom that would guide my life on a day-to-day level, and so I felt it wasn't worth the time to worry about.

All of that has changed. I guess this election campaign has made me see that more was at stake than I had thought, for my country and for the world. I am genuinely glad that Barack Obama will become president of the United States on January 20th. Whether he will work any great wonderwork for the country remains to be seen. But change is in the air, not just for me but for my country.

The bailouts--the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street and the proposed bailout of the auto industry--have recently attracted my interest. Both are quite vexing to me, not for any particular ideological reason but because of what they reveal about what has happened to the American character in recent years. I am angry that so much has been given to the country's largest banks, on the assumption they would use it to make loans and end the credit crisis, without any oversight whatsoever. I'm sorry, but $350 billion is not the price of a lemonade at a child's lemonade stand. It represents upwards of $1000 for every man, woman, and child in the country, and it ought not to have been handed out without clear instructions as to how it was to be used.

But the proposed bailout of the auto industry makes me angrier, and for reasons that defy clear political or ideological classification. I am not the hardcore conservative I once was. My own checkered career since graduation has made me more aware of how easy it is for people to fall through the cracks, for reasons having nothing to do with their moral fibre. So my objections to this bailout are not the objections of a conservative objecting to welfare.

No, my objections are deeper than that. My feeling is that this bailout will only serve to reward the stewards of the Big Three (a good friend of mind now calls them "The Little Three") who got us into this mess, and who undertook no sacrifices to avoid the catastrophe they are now asking Washington to help them avert.

There is so much more these men could have done. They could have refused stock options, given up their seven-figure salaries, and sold off the corporate jets long before they became the object of national ridicule. Having so done, they could have gone to the unions and the workers and asked everyone to work together in a spirit of shared sacrifice--not merely told, but also shown, their workers that everyone in the company was in the same boat. But they did none of that.

Commentators have noted that the Big Three are "too big to fail". Maybe. But if they are, they are also too big to have been run so incompetently for so long. The CEOs of Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford continued for years to receive hefty compensation as their factories turned out crap no one wanted to buy.

This is not the first time of late that Americans have watched people in high places act as though they were entitled to reward not for a job well done, not merely for showing up to work each day, but just for being who they are. The spectacle of Enron was shocking, to say the least. But in a way, all Americans have been living the life of the Big Three executives, the life not merely of Riley but of Ken Lay.

Americans have long crowed about their national prosperity. For many years, however, that crowing was based on something. Americans had the world's highest standard of living, we understood, because we had worked for it. American ingenuity had given the world the phonograph and the cinema and the Tin Lizzie. We worked hard to produce things the world wanted to buy. The chicken in every pot and the two cars in every garage were our reward for that hard work.

Somewhere along the line, something changed. We started to think we were entitled to this wealth not because our factories were the most efficient or our products the best. We started to think we were entitled to it simply because we were Americans. We treated wealth not as a reward for hard work but as a birthright. We deserved SUVs the size of woolly mammoths and $2.00 gasoline just because we were us.

At the same time, our images of the wealthy elite changed. Once, we had admired the Henry Fords and Thomas Edisons who had given us our cars and electric lights and had reaped the rewards of their inventiveness and hard word; now, those Americans who admire the very rich admire a very different creature, a woman whose claim to fame consists solely in having been born an heiress and having put up a pornographic tape of herself on the internet. It's no wonder Americans are so obsessed with Paris Hilton. In a thousand ways, we have all become Parisians.

Because of these changes, I don't recognize my country any more. To quote Leslie Caron, I don't understand the Parisians. Who are these strange creatures? Not the people I was taught Americans were supposed to be.

I hope for all our sakes, we say no to this bailout of the auto industry. I feel for the people in Michigan and other rustbelt states who will lose their jobs and have to make a difficult transition. As a more progressive person than I once was, I hope that our government will provide them with the aid they need to make it through until either the Japanese automakers pick up the pieces of the Big Three or new industry develops in these regions. In a civilized country, everyone is entitled to food, clothing, and a decent roof over their heads.

But what everyone is not entitled to is a life in the lap of luxury--the good life without the good effort and hard work that make it possible. America can no longer persist in that delusion. The costs over the long term are far too great.

Let us hope our nation's leaders have the sense to pull the plug on the American auto industry, as swiftly as General Motors pulled the plug on the electric car.