The former CEO of Bear Stearns has apologized, sort of. Appearing rather disheveled at a private meeting, James Cayne offered a brief apology and then quickly pointed a finger at the financial hurricane that caught everyone off guard.
Yah, sure, you betcha!
The collapse of the vaunted, business-can't-do-any-wrong idolatry, created by "there-ya-go-again" Ronald Reagan, can't come quickly enough. Having lived for 16 years in Detroit, I saw big business up close and personal - untold waste and corporate greed, high-end salaries for the upper-crust while bashing the unions and blaming corporate ills on the guy on the shop floor.
We're learning once again that business is business, nothing more and nothing less - that its moral underpinnings are questionable at best. No doubt, there are a lot of moral folk in the corporate world, but in the last three decades, John Grisham's "The Firm" mentality, baptized by Reganomics at the Republican alter called Mammon, took hold, forcing many to sell their souls just to bring home a paycheck. No wonder so many folks are opting for a ragtag spirituality that's all inward rather than a healthy prophetic faith that takes on the dark powers and principalities of greed and manipulation. Who can blame folks for wanting a faith to soothe the cry of the soul when fed the lies and distortions of the last 30 years.
The only solution is to have a clear-headed federal government and a skilled Congress who can be the moral watchdog for the Republic. Asking biz to police itself is the proverbial hiring of the fox to guard the hen house.
Part of the whole Regan-Bush debacle reveals its sad philosophy by our refusal to sign on to a new treaty banning cluster bombs. To be signed by more than a hundred nations, the U.S. of A has thus far declined.
Why?
Yah, I know ... national interests ... just like torture - we need every vile form of pain in order to "protect" ourselves - meanwhile, the enemy is something ugly and insidious within our own heart - the very reluctance to sign the treaty, the unending effort to defend torture, reveals the acids corroding the American Spirit. But, after, all, Bush is a man of prayer and faith. The same kind of spirituality that "sees no evil, speaks no evil and hears no evil," thus turning a blind eye to suffering while still "feeling pretty dadgum good about itself."
We can do better ... we've done better ... and we will do better again.
While I'd like to pray to God to give us worthy leaders, I suspect God is saying, "Give me worthy leaders, and I will bless them."
Is this not up to us?
