When does a quantitative change in politics become a qualitative one? Many, including Karl Marx, have puzzled over this question without providing a fully satisfactory response. At long last an answer now appears to be at our disposal. Blago, Bernie, and Barack, each in his own way, has achieved or is planning deeds of such magnitude as to alter the very perception of the world we have come to know. Americans are now clearly entering into the new age of Gargantuan politics.
First Blago, aka Rod Blagojevich, the governor (for the moment) of the sovereign state of Illinois. That a politician, in particular one with Chicago pedigree, should be engaged in trading the benefits of public office for personal or private benefit is fully to be expected. Stealing, nepotism, receiving illegal campaign contributions, giving non-bid contracts for friends are only among a few of the time-honored practices in this political culture. They have also been integral parts of the nation’s political folklore. To wish for honest politics in Illinois is to be something of a spoil sport, eliminating much of the fun and color from the American political scene. So what then is so transformative about Blago? It is the sheer scale of the corruption, which has defied credulity. To sell a Senate seat in 2008, especially the former seat of the Chosen One, thereby embroiling a world historical moment in the unseemliness of a typical Chicago ward deal, reaches new depths.
Oh yes, and let’s not forget the hair. Whatever might be said about Sarah Palin’s do, which feminists criticized as a throwback to an era when women were treated as ditsies, it pales into insignificance besides Blago’s cut, which is vintage 1970’s. And then there is the black leather jacket (or is it vinyl?) that puts Sarah’s patent leather red shoes to shame.
Next there is Bernard Madoff “Uncle Bernie,” as he was referred to by some of his (former) acolytes. Bernie has proven that fact really can be much grander than fiction. The confidence man, as Herman Melville showed us in a novel by that name, is a figure that goes back a very long time. Bilking of the small fry, the gullible or the unsuspecting widow is enough to make one a dirty rotten scoundrel, although there is admittedly some joy to be experienced in seeing some of the best and brightest go down with them. But it is the magnitude of this fraud, the staggering sums that Madoff made off with, that puts this deed into a different category. Had he stolen $5 million, it should have been enough (“diyehnu”), $5 billion “diyehnu,” but it is at least $50 billion, a sum that dwarfs the budgets of most countries of the world. What Uncle Bernie has proven shows that there is simply no upper limit on what the confidence man can achieve in this age of rational regulation.
Which brings us finally to our president elect, Barack Obama. With each week, nay with each day and hour, the projected size of his stimulus package keeps moving upward. When the federal government used to indulge its Keynesian fantasies, the cost was measured in the hundreds of millions or the low billions. George Bush’s tax rebate last year went as high as 150 billion. These sums today are mere chump change. If Secretary Paulson has a personal line of credit of some $700 billion with which to experiment, surely if a new president is to think in “bold” terms and to make the kind of “statement” that will draw attention, a stimulus of a mere few hundred billion cannot suffice. So the latest reports—get ready to trill your t’s—have the package pushing one trillion. Everything, naturally, is being wrapped up with getting stimulated. It’s plain as day that the economic crisis can’t be solved unless the government “takes care of “ healthcare, energy, education and no doubt climate change as well.
Get used to the Gargantuan Age. Everything, as Emerald has put it, has been kicked up a notch.
