During the primaries, many lamented how self-identified "progressives" were willing to use false charges of racism, misogyny, and every tool that the right developed in the 1990s to smear both Clintons (along with some new and special smears of their own), to elect a candidate they deemed "progressive," much like themselves. But that's all blood under the bridge, right? I've gotten over it. And personally, I never liked the "progressive" label much anyhow, because I didn't see that the word had an answer to the question "Progress in what direction?"* Now, of course, we're getting better answers.

It never occurred to me that there might be a problem with "progressivism" in itself. But now Robert Johnson of New Deal 2.0 raises the issue. Now that we're in the midst of The Big Fail, is progressivism a FAIL, too? Johnson takes off from Taibbi's article, and puts it in context:

In Matt Taibbi’s vivid and provocative new article in Rolling Stone, “The Great American Bubble Machine,” the man absolutely screams.

Taibbi’s rage is filling an emotional void. It is a reaction to what is missing after this profound speculative episode that the IMF suggests will cost over $4 trillion in losses on balance sheets and untold trillions in lost output. It is fury over a crisis that is, by any measure, the most profoundly damaging episode since the 1930s (and the Bank for International Settlements Annual Report released this week strongly suggests that the burden on stockholders is far from over)....

There is an age-old tension that emerges in situations like this. You can feel it yourself. We know things are not right but do not exactly know why. Finance is complex. Since the progressive era, trust in “experts” has often been suggested as the best way for society to handle such complex phenomena. We are encouraged to delegate to the likes of leading academics, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Secretary, and financiers themselves to keep an eye on the public interest. Public officials are explicitly employed to undertake this task on behalf of society. Those in the private sector often appeal to experts, encouraging public. deference to their superior knowledge. Experts are thought to be the custodians of the nation’s health. ...

The problem now is that the experts and leaders from finance [and not only finance] have failed us miserably. They have let us down and we know it. We do not trust in the system. [That is the problem, not confidence.] No one thinks the Federal Reserve did a bang-up job in the years preceding this crisis. The failure is much more profound in the private sector, yet for the most part that failure goes unacknowledged. Even with losses and bailouts, we have to fight over bonus payments to those who feel entitled, despite the cost they have imposed on their stockholders and, more importantly, society.

What we are witnessing, as I have written elsewhere, is a perverse form of insurance pay off. Let’s call it political insurance. Ordinarily when insurance is offered, a premium is paid and, over time, the provider of insurance sets the rate on the premium so that they make a bit of money despite periodic payouts for accidents. What we have here is different. The financial sector, and other large patronage donors, spend billions of dollars on lobbyists and campaign contributions. Politicians then run their expensive election marketing campaigns with the proceeds. And finally, the contributors buy downside loss protection from the politicians and their appointees.

Who provides that downside protection? You and me. The taxpayer. The body politic. We get used by this refracted process, and our system is mislabeled as a representative democracy. And, to add insult to injury, we are forced to endure the the horror of the awful marketing campaigns of politicians using the their payoff money to protect donors with our the tax base. The media is on the take, too [as we see today], collecting advertising revenue from financial companies and from political campaigns. Far be it for them to step outside this circular flow of funds that impedes our political system from incorporating feedback from evidence of its own dysfunction. ...

We are amidst a crisis of political legitimacy. The leaders of our complex financial firms have failed. They have failed as stewards of our nation’s future. They have failed as protectors of our public Treasury. Now, with trillions guaranteed, hundreds of billions of bailouts paid, and very little in the way of investigation, firings, or prosecution of the perpetrators, we are all being asked to calm down, move on, and stop acting like populists (a pejorative term when used by elite media or financiers). In the mean time, the perpetrators of this disaster confidently pay their political soldiers for another round of lobbying/campaign contribution money. ...

[In his book on the 2004 Democratic primaries] Taibbi describes how he had worked in Russia as a journalist for 10 years. He details the atrocities he saw, along with his sense of sympathy and fascination for the terrible things before his eyes. ... He describes how he had no idea how to cover the Presidental election but found the need to develop a strategy to move ahead: “…I did not see much that suggested to me that a groundswell of change is on the way. But I do believe there is a strategy to pursue in the meantime, and that is TO REFUSED TO BE LIED TO….” ...

[Taibbil,] who had a ringside seat for the grotesque rape of the body politic in 1990s Russia by rapacious private oligarchs, is sickened by what he sees in the USA now! Let me say that again. He watched the rape of the Russian people up close and he is sickened by what is happening in the USA right now.

Maybe when you see it happen in a foreign country, tragedy can be seen as comedy. Perhaps when it happens in your own country and devastates the people you love, things take on a darker tone. Or maybe it really is as objectively bad here as his scream indicates. Or at least becoming so. Whatever your interpretation, we all owe thanks to Taibbi for screaming. He is warning us, and it will do us all some good to feel his rage and connect it to the rage that resides within each of us.

Feeling Taibbi’s outrage will help us refuse to be lied to by the experts in media, politics and finance. It will help us see through them when they pretend that they have not let us down or play the same old dysfunctional political patronage game to insure that things do not change. It will help us force them to give up some of their advantage to restore some balance and better serve the American people.

Well, so much for the experts, eh? Back in the Progresive Era, we were told that trusting apolitical experts was the way forward to good government. That hasn't worked out so well, lately, has it?

For what happened to our newest set of "experts," the "creative" [cough] "class," see VastLeft's interview with Eric Boehlert, here:

* Are there important lessons that could and should be learned by looking back?

[BOEHLERT] Sure. My feeling is that people think the 2008 turbulence online represented a once-in-a-lifetime situation and that the ugly fracture that occurred won’t happen again. But if nothing is learned from 2008 I’m pretty sure it will happen again (I have no idea what the circumstances and players will be) and participants will act surprised all over again.

FAIL, FAIL, FAIL. "Progressives" are doing the same thing and expecting a different result. We have to find a better way.

NOTE * A skepticism that, what with Obama's vote on FISA [cough] Reform, the TARP giveaways, and the walk-back on torture and executive power seems, in retrospect, to be amply warranted.