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Albeit fondly remembered by some....
I really love Lendman, and it pains me to hear him bleating stuff that he's known was the playbook all along, that many know has been the playbook all along. I know or know of plenty of other guys bleating this stuff as though efforts to kindle enough alarm is really what it takes, and maybe they're right, but just about everybody we listen to has been bellowing it to the rafters from well before the horror broke upon the general public. Everyone in Congress knew what to do about it right away, voted against bailouts, but somehow, and right before our very eyes, procedure was thrown out the window and bailouts were passed anyway.
Actually, SOME were screaming about it since Glass-Steagal was repealed. Nobody listens to anyone. Or they listen and fume along with them and don't do Thing One. We have been observers of and participants in this drill for far too long by now to think that mustering the ire of the masses this way has the remotest chance of succeeding. It just turns into a type of identity politics. It stops being about DOING anything about it and turns into a protracted condition for the generation of opinion and the writers and pundits just go along trying to stay on what they feel is the best side of opinion they can be on.
It's theater.
I am certain they'd rather not be stage actors, that they really do want to save the day, or at least inject some sense into it, but it baffles me that people seem to think this frantic activity could have anything to do with effectiveness. It baffles me that people are still mystified about Zen Master Dogen's stop doing and perform, that they could view, for instance, Lendman's appearance here as work to accomplish the goal of solving this problem. I don't GET how everyone stays fooled about this point when the stakes are so dire. I know that this sort of thespianism is easily accepted as righteous, that people approve of those like, in this instance, Lendman as though they were approving of Olivier in Hamlet, but I can't hang with how this makes do as some sort of proof that a problem has been tackled by the forces of good and they have failed. This problem has NOT been tackled by the forces of good. It has been gnawed to a pulp by them, but nobody's DONE anything, PERFORMED on the duty to make a livable world, actually made their positive intent MANIFEST on the problem itself. It's all hand wringing, EVEN in our favorites.
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