My phone rang early the other morning, so early that I hadn’t fed our house cats yet and they kept meowing through the conversation. It was my favorite inside source, Ananias Ziegler, communications director for the Committee That Really Runs America.
After he asked about the cat sounds, he explained that “I wanted to warn you that your patriotism is in question because you failed to attend your local Tax Day Tea Bag rally.”
“How would you know that I was doing some yard work before going indoors to poison my mind with liberal propaganda from Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow?” I asked.
“We have our ways,” he explained. “And I understand you filed everything on time this year. What kind of American would do that?”
“A self-employed American,” I replied, “one who is more scared of the IRS than of the Taliban, the Mexican drug cartels and Somali pirates, all put together.”
“So you should have joined the protest,” Ziegler said.
“But I write for the evil Mainstream Media,” I objected. “And rumor has it that we have orders to ignore the rally, although I haven’t seen anything official from the Biased Liberal Media Directorate, nor from the Amalgamation of Drive-by Media. Besides, if Fox News is the ratings champ it claims to be, doesn’t that make Fox a mainstream outlet? And Fox certainly didn’t ignore the tea parties.”
“You’ve got a problem with logic,” Ziegler growled. “You’re using it, and this isn’t about logic.”
“So what is it about?” I asked.
“Indignation,” Ziegler said.
“We should be indignant,” I said. “Here we are shoveling billions of our tax dollars into Citigroup, so that Citi can turn around and lend it back to Americans at 17 percent or more on credit cards.”
“That’s not what you’re supposed to be indignant about,” Ziegler replied. “You’re supposed to be indignant about those people who bought houses by taking out mortgages that they couldn’t repay.”
“Look, I didn’t make those dumb loans.”
Ziegler sighed. “Don’t you realize that the federal government forced them to make these loans under the Community Reinvestment Act?”
“That law started in 1977,” I replied. “If it was so bad, why did it take three decades to cause problems?”
He grunted. “It was changed over the years to encourage more bad loans.”
“I read that at least half the bad subprime loans were made by lenders that weren’t covered by the CRA,” I argued. “Who was holding a gun to their heads?”
Ziegler waited until I could push the noisy cat off my lap. “You just don’t understand modern banking. And you really don’t understand modern scapegoating.”
“I guess I don’t,” I agreed. “It’s just really hard for me to imagine how a bunch of people too poor to make their house payments could bring down the world financial system.”
Ziegler changed the subject. “But aren’t you worried about these big federal deficits?”
“Of course I am. But just a decade ago, the federal budget was running a surplus and the Congressional Budget Office predicted the national debt would be paid off by now. Of course, that was before the Bush tax cuts and the invasion of Iraq. Where were the Teabaggers five years ago if they’re so worried about deficits?”
Ziegler explained, “Your problem is that you’re expecting people to be consistent and logical. You need to get with the program by getting indignant about one of our approved targets — you know, illegal immigrants, gays in the military, mortgage defaulters, gay marriage. Otherwise, you have no right to be indignant.”
Ed Quillen (ed@cozine.com) of Salida is a freelance writer and frequent contributor to The Post.
