September 15, 2008
If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank—or the Company—needs—wants—insists—must have—as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. …
And the owner men explained the workings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. … “But—you see, a bank or a company can’t do that, because those creatures don’t breathe air, don’t eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without side-meat…. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can’t stay one size…. We have to do it. We don’t like to do it. But the monster’s sick. Something’s happened to the monster…. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it…. The monster isn’t men, but it can make men do what it wants.”—Chapter 5, “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck
The monster is sick again, men still think they can control it, and the monster is still making men do what it wants. This time the socialists of both parties will feed the monster $300 billion; the monster will only burp and ask for more.
Steve Forbes supports the Freddy Mac-Fannie Mae bailout suggesting that, “Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson should finally do to these two corrupt, mismanaged monsters what he should have done months ago … which will require an initial outlay of more than $300 billion.”
$300 billion is a lot of money; it’s enough money to operate the entire government of the State of Florida for the next five years. It is $1,000 for each man, woman and child in America. For example, the direct combat expense of five years of war in Iraq has been $500 billion.
As a country lawyer in small town Florida, I see more honest, hard-working people that are hurting than any time in memory. They’re out of money, they’re out of work, they’ve exhausted their retirement accounts, their property and homes are worth less than they owe, and they are headed to foreclosure or bankruptcy or just walking away from everything they worked for. They would view the idea that some “bailout” in the secondary mortgage market will save them as a cruel joke. They have no down payment, they have no credit score and they have—no hope.
But wait: There is hope. Politics is more than dollars and cents. Human beings make major decisions on emotion, not calculation. The car, the house, our spouse—and, yes, our favorite candidate—is not a strict calculation but an infatuation, the mystery of human emotion. And, while the Obama team basked in their candidate’s inevitability, Sarah Palin made an emotional connection with the nation. The nation has seen a little bit of glory through the selection of Sarah Palin:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
The terrible swift sword has fallen on the Obama campaign, and as much as they will try to reinvigorate and refocus on the economic woes of the country it will all be for naught. It is over. America has found a ticket they can trust, and there is no stopping it now.
Today, McCain and Palin are harvesting the vintage wrath of the mainstream media, Hollywood and of Obama himself. But it now looks entirely plausible that, on the first Tuesday in November, the vintage wrath may well be trampled.
Johnnie Byrd is a lawyer and host of “Johnnie Byrd’s Weekend” heard on WGUL-AM 860 in Tampa Bay, FL. Contact Johnnie at [email protected].
