Door Number None

I'm still doomerish. That was more or less confirmed supported today with the inauguration of the Pope of Hope while our markets fell 4% and the Royal Bank of Scotland lost 69.31%. I blogged yesterday that when the champagne goes flat, when the Washington thoroughfares are re-opened to traffic, and when the last cocoanut shrimp skewer is polished off, the revelers will board their busses and return to eight percent and rising unemployment, return to jobs that disappeared over the weekend, and return to crushing personal and public debts in the face of a deflationary implosion that will eat all debt-holders alive.

Come on, I'm cognizant of the lunacy of trying to correlate an inauguration with the daily action of the Dow...but damn, you'd think, you'd really, really think, that if there were any heartbeats left in our flat-lined financial corpse it would have been resuscitated by the Obama defibrillator today. Clear!.........Clear! Our financial system is based on Hope. Hope that when you lend out money, them sons-of-bitches will pay you back with interest.

Today, Hope lost. Everyone thinks everyone else won't pay them back, and rightfully so. Bank of America shareholders are staring down the public trough, hopeful that Mr. Taxpayer will absolve their company's asinine decision to buy Merrill Lynch without any fucking idea what sorts of bad debts are in their vaults. They picked the wrong door, but all doors were the wrong door. The only right door was door number none.



The chained goat is staring us down behind every door: door number one -- the mountains of debt in every bank vault; door number 2 -- the mountains of debt piled upon every individual Merikan; door number three -- the looming insolvency of our domestic automakers and industrial capacity.

If I didn't think about such things, if I didn't think they mattered, I wouldn't be wasting my time blogging about them. I do think all this matters, and I think the whole drama of our imploding economy is part and parcel of an America that could be so much better, but one that chooses to run itself into the ground.

I do not (personally) have any hope that we will be able to set things right. I'm not talking about the economy, necessarily, but rather, all the things I take issue with on the Franklin Monologues. I have rarely expressed much optimism, with all my sarcastic blogging about window shutters and "mix used" urban design, that we will ever do anything about them. I may sound like a cheerleader for specific, wished-for outcomes, but don't mistake the fact that ultimately I root for our destruction.

I think the only way I would be able to live in my own Monologueonian world would be through self-destruction. This isn't a cynical viewpoint -- the real cynics are all those who pray that things are going to get better and we end up with more of the same shit. I know that they only way I'm ever going to be able to bike to work without 4,500 pound steel projectiles at my back would be if thousands of you decided to ride alongside, decided to demand better urban environments that supported non-automotive transport, decided you wanted live communities instead of dead cul-de-sacs, decided you wanted cleaner air instead of Chuck E. Cheeses on every corner. But, thousands of you don't, and I know and accept this.

Nonetheless, I am, personally, satisfied. I have a great family, a fantastic job they don't even have to pay me to do, and overall, I'm quite joyful. I show the utmost contempt on this blog but don't mistake it for anger, because really, I enjoy my commentary on our sad and pitiful human habitats and conditions.

Blog on.