The Resilience of Americans Is Not A Matter of Belief Or Philosophy, But Of Statistics
Today, I read a response to an article regarding how much Americans will be willing to tolerate before outright rebellion.
“An AK-47, three magazines and 90 rounds can be purchased for $200 on the black market”, said the respondent. He went on to say that it was a question of mathematics; the idea of ‘how long’.
I’ll restate the title of this piece – math is a bitch. It’s remorseless, it’s in-your-face – and it’s never, ever wrong.
The fate of Titanic is an excellent metaphor, as it turns out.
Titanic, as those of us who Stayed Awake in Class learned years ago (and as the rest of America and the world learned from watching DiCaprio’s Jack and Winslet’s Rose deal with the effects of engineering and math), had watertight doors below decks separating the entire ship into compartments – but they only went from the keel-plates to the middle of the ship – ‘E’-deck.
The ship was designed to stay afloat – to retain positive buoyancy – with any four of these compartments flooded. Any more than that, and the ship would sink.
The ship was designed to stay afloat – to retain positive buoyancy – with any four of these compartments flooded. Any more than that, and the ship would sink.
The grazing-wound which opened up the starboard side of Titanic flooded five of those compartments. As the water rose, each succeeding compartment would flood – making the demise of Titanic a ‘mathematical certainty’, as the actor playing ship’s engineer Andrews stated with some finality.
“The pumps buy you time, but minutes only,” he went on to say. Faced with this, Titanic’s captain had two fundamental choices to make. He could scare the hell out of every passenger until they took the situation seriously; break the rules, and do absolutely everything possible – including ordering the crew topside to build makeshift rafts; ensuring that the lifeboats were deliberately overloaded, and thus ensuring the survival of perhaps three-quarters of the passengers aboard.
Or, he could do what he eventually did – order the band to play in order to ‘keep their spirits up and prevent alarm’; botch the loading of the lifeboats, and ignore the problem generally until it was too late to do anything which was either really dramatic, constructive, or (preferably) both.
That’s rather where we are right now.
In spite of the current administration’s half-measures and ‘compromise’, we are now in a position where some basic math is staring us square in the face – and it doesn’t look good.
By example, today, the government pointed out that first-time unemployment claims fell to below 400,000/month for the first time in two years.
While that might seem at first blush to be cause for some joy in Mudville, the truth is this: the American economy has shed almost six million jobs since January. That figure, by the way, would be cause for alarm even in a robust economy – and if the rest of the economic statistics are taken into consideration, things look even worse.
One person in seven is on food-stamps. Over eight million people have, as their sole income, unemployment insurance compensation. While this guarantees that we won’t see things like long lines at soup-kitchens and tent-cities, that palliative is like a Band-Aid on cancer; or like the band playing the main-deck on Titanic – the real problem is hidden, deep within the economic structure (or deep below-decks, if you prefer).
The worst of the foreclosure crisis is still to come – one in two American homes is ‘underwater’ (more is owed on mortgages than they’re worth – and a staggering one in four, or 25%, are in some form of foreclosure right now.
You can see that bragging about a decrease in first-time unemployment numbers is a lot like the captain of the Titanic, getting on the bullhorn and saying, “Things aren’t that bad! The pumps are buying us some time! We’re sinking at a decreasing rate!”
Of course, he didn’t say any such thing – because it would have been stupid, irresponsible, and (worse) would have marked him as a damn fool. (The Edwardians tended to be concerned about their legacy and reputation, after all.)
On the other hand, our government doesn’t seem to be concerned about such things. We continue to sink, and they want us to believe that sinking at a decreasing rate is the same as recovery.
The basic math rears its ugly head to tell us otherwise.
I saw the film “Titanic” in the theatre, along with a lady-friend. After the jump-cut to Titanic’s bridge, and the scene of water pouring over the cutwater and into the hold with the bow completely submerged, I turned to my date with a bit of gallows-humor and said, “I don’t think this is going to end well.”
The real wildcard here is Congress, and with the Republicans in charge and the last real avenue for revenue-generation now out of reach for at least another two years, there aren’t many options available. There’s an outside chance that Congress will take action – but thanks to the Citizens United ruling, Congress was bought-and-paid-for by the people who caused most of this mess in the first place.
What remains is to hide the numbers – play a shell-game with the math until it becomes so obvious what’s going on that it makes no sense (and less difference) to pretend any longer.
At that point – coming soon to a real-life theatre near you – are some hard-nosed questions:
First, what will be the trigger-point for revolution? Twenty-five percent unemployment, or thirty? Twenty percent foreclosures, or twenty-five? A full ten million homeless, or fifteen?
We already know the entry-fee – it’s $200; available in any city in America.
What I fear more is the cost.
Math really is a bitch, folks.
Happy 2011….
