How would Americans react if terrorists blew up a large bank?
Americans clearly identified with the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. When the giant World Trade Center towers collapsed into piles of flames and ashes, Americans knew at a gut level that this was an attack against all Americans. We mourned all the victims and we were willing to risk many lives and immense amounts of money to retaliate against the aggressors.
Image by SpoonMonkey at Flickr (creative commons)
Fast forward to the present day. It has become clear that Goldman Sachs has corrupted Congress with a steady diet of campaign contributions in order to circumvent the financial well-being of American citizens. This includes using its powerful influence over Congress to destroy desperately needed financial regulations that, years ago, prevented large banks from endangering the American economy. Consider also that Goldman Sachs has repeatedly manipulated the market for its own benefit to the detriment of honest investors. Rolling Stone’s Matt Tabbi summed up the purpose and achievements of Goldman Sachs as follows:
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money . . . [Goldman Sachs uses] the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They’ve been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s.
Consider this hypothetical: Given the fact that the modus operandi of Goldman Sachs has now become better known, how would modern day Americans react if terrorists destroyed the New Jersey headquarters of Goldman Sachs?
This hypothetical raises a number of compelling questions, including each of the following:
- To what extent would America be angry about this attack?
- To what extent would America mourn?
- To what extent would Americans consider this to be an attack “on America”?
- To what extent would the public insist on expensive and bloody retribution?
- To what extent would Americans applaud this act of terrorism?
- What would Americans think of this attack if it were discovered that the attack had been planned and conducted by Caucasian middle-aged Americans, none of them having any sort of criminal record, all of whom having lost their jobs or retirement savings due to the actions of Goldman Sachs?
Add this to the mix: Goldman Sachs is only going to pay ONE PERCENT of its earnings in federal income tax. Do YOU pay more than one percent?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=a6bQVsZS2_18
Erich,
This post is over the top and offends me. Please remove my name from this blog as an author or contributor.
Thank you,
Mr. TMOL
This is something to think about. Before the 9/11 attacks, the WTC was nothing special to most Americans. It held the bragging rights to the tallest building in the US, and for a while, tallest in the world, but few Americans knew or cared who worked in the towers. A few people knew the towers were a commercial failure, but could not tell you who the tenants of the towers were.
However, to the rest of the world, the towers were a a symbol of all that is wrong with American foreign policy. They were twin phallic monuments to the collective egotism of the corporate military industrial complex. They represented the idea that American corporations were willing to screw over any small country for their resources.
The giants of the financial industry, however, have been exposed for the corrupt and depraved institutions they are, and I suspect many American would not shed a tear if these corporate monsters fell.
The Murrah building in Oklahoma City, similarly, was not symbolic to most people, but to McVeigh and Nichols it was a symbol of government corruption. Immediately after the bombing, TV news outlets were speculatively blaming Islamic terrorists, but when the investigation pointer to Americans as the bombers, the outrage suddenly faded.
The media made all the difference between these two events, causing disproportionate outrage in the 911 bombing and a call to arms by politicians and industrialists with much to gain from a war in the middle east.
So it comes down to how would Fox News report the story. How would they managed to spin the victimizer as the ultimate victim?
Niklaus: You’ve identified the issue that intrigues me too. Do Americans identify any longer with large Wall Street banks? Do those buildings represent “us”?
TMOL thinks this post is “over the top.” This post is a thought experiment. I’m not encouraging anyone to do any harm to any other person in America. To the contrary, anyone committing murder should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and I would entirely support long sentences or even the death penalty for such acts.
Nonetheless, I created this thought experiment to illustrate how much alienated main street is from Wall Street. I followed the hypothetical with pointed questions that intrigue me. These questions dovetail closely with the increasingly clear revelations that the banks “own” Congress. To the extent that this is true, it would constitute a violation of the sacred inner core of the American Constitution.
I suspect that America would be outraged, but it wouldn’t be anything like 9/11. If the act were perpetrated by disgruntled Caucasian middle-aged Americans, I suspect that a large proportion of Americans would not shed many tears, because they don’t identify with Wall Street. As I’ve posted many times, I would like to see Congress wake up and reign in the banks with comprehensive regulations that would dramatically change the way banks do business. I would also like to see that reform coupled with clean elections legislation, to keep corporate money completely out of politics, but that is a topic that tragically isn’t on the radar of most of our political representatives.
I write this post prior to any full audit of the Federal Reserve, which can be expected to exacerbate these feeling of alienation even further.
I suppose that this situation would greatly divide my emotions. On one hand, many innocent maintenance/cleaning/support workers would die. On another hand, greedy bastards who have screwed up this country would understand what kind of damage their actions have truly done to the individuals who have lost their value in life, these masters of the financial universe seem to rarely understand the real world suffering they can create, sometimes I wonder if they are even capable of looking within and reflecting on their own value. Are their frames so strong that they can not be challenged?
The bomber would think he was giving the banker a fiery revenge. The banker would think he is only their to help the parasite, why would he strike him? And most of us will not know what to feel until the media spins spins spins. Do we really know anything about killers/mass murderers? Instead of finding out about the failures and situations that lead the person to this act, we hear meaningless labels that are so broad that we know they can’t apply…if we can think.
The greatest irony is that the bomber and banker are both caricatures, inflicted with the limitation of understanding life only through their own experience, never to be able to help one another as they perpetually blame one another for the ills of society. The bomber to be called, “lazy”, the banker to be called a “parasite”. Almost like the tale of the frog and the scorpion, except both view the other as a scorpion. Of course I’ve never been convinced a banker would carry someone on their back at their own risk.
An individual must have either a huge supply of wrath or mental illness to indiscriminately kill so many people, and these bankers seriously think that the system is just. With so many people in this country, it shocks me that by sheer probability of chance, that this happens so rarely.
Much to think about.
Last week was a bad one for Geithner and Bernanke. Senator Dodd said that Bernanke’s confirmation was no longer a done deal. The House Financial Services Committee revolted against the administration, the Fed, and Chairman Barney Frank. It voted for a strong bill to audit the Fed. Senate Banking Chairman Schumer went to a conference at Columbia University — where a generation of students salivated at the prospects of Wall Street wealth — and was overwhelmed by an audience denouncing the continuing stranglehold of the finance industry over successive administrations and the Congress.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/why-is-obama-championing_b_367540.html
Suppose that the hypothetical bank attack does not happen today, but a year from today. Imagine U-3 unemployment at 15%, ongoing mass foreclosures, continued falling real estate prices, and a further disillusioned and disgruntled citizenry. Imagine the stock market has continued to rise over the course of the year, while the dollar has continued its fall. Oil prices continue their inexorable rise, while national politicians continue their mantra that “all is well, the recession is over”.
Populism has been slow to rise, but is potentially explosive given the right spark — especially if the hypothetical perpetrator of the attack was someone who had directly suffered as a result of the actions of the hypothetical bank. Imagine someone who lost their home to foreclosure after being unemployed for months and “snapped”. We’re already seeing an increase in those types of violent outbursts. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to foresee an attack of the type you speculate about, especially as more people begin to wake up and realize the depth of the fraud and corruption in the system now. Worst case scenario, it could even potentially spark a wave of similar violence or social unrest, especially if the bank responded to the attack in their typical “let them eat cake” fashion.
I couldn’t help but think James Kunstler’s latest piece was fitting here also:
“The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=ahD2WoDAL9h0
The message from Public Citizen: It doesn’t take much intelligence to make money off of zero percent interest, courtesy of the Federal Reserve. Anyone could do that, as long as they can get their hands on that money. To do that you need to be insiders, and to do that you need to shower money on our Congress, corrupting democracy in the process.
http://citizenvox.org/2009/11/16/public-citizen-rallies-against-the-banksters/