The Happy Pill:
Portrait of a Middle-Class Homeowner
During the Fallout of Economic Meltdown
by John Stines
SMASHWORDS EDITION published by John Stines and Averso Group Books
The Happy Pill: Portrait of a Middle-Class Homeowner During the Fallout of Economic Meltdown. Copyright 2011 by John Stines. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except for critical usage with citation. This may include brief quotations, paraphrasing, or references made in books, articles, or reviews. For information, please contact Averso Group via email at aversogroup@gmail.com or visit our website at http://www.aversogroup.com where the book may also be purchased in print edition through our online retailers.
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Although each and every character, conversation and event in this book is nonfiction, names of individuals have been changed simply to protect their privacy. Any similarity with other persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Cover photo “Sunday Flowers” by Zula Mae Johnston, c. 1976
Cover design by John Stines
Author photo by Dr. Najma Al Zidjaly
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To observe evil acts and do nothing to stop them is to share responsibility for such acts.
–Tsunesaburo Makiguchi
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With love and appreciation to Noor and Amo for their encouragement and support.
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Table of Contents
1........2000: The Real Odyssey
3........How Else Could I Make Money?
5........The Rise of the American Redneck
9........Where the Hell is France?
16......Marty Stewart Home Improvement Hour
20......Forex For Quick Denars
21......There Ain’t Nuthin’ We Can Do About That!: Part 1
22......Weight Reduction Scheme
25......There’s No “T” in Colbert!
29......There Ain’t Nuthin’ We Can Do About That!: Part 2
34......How Do You Spell Freedom?
35......Multiple Lousy Service
36......The Good, The Bad and The Discussion
37......2012: Collision Course With the Real Axis of Evil
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Introduction
Let’s face it. America is a country that used to stand for something. Our recent past has caused so many problems that we can’t seem to remember exactly what our principles were, or how they evolved. If the mistakes of imperialism and war are to be pushed under the rug of financial ruin, then history will reveal a government and media system that functioned to consciously mislead and misguide the same citizens who enabled them by consuming their tales and micro-histories. Because we usually only get to hear the voices of the rich, famous, and connected, I wanted The Happy Pill to present a significant look at how cheap interest has played a part in causing this economic and political train wreck. Can we really “win the future” instead of watching it get further jeopardized by powerful, rich corporations and their family tree of the top one percent?
In light of the constant failure of media to speak about the cause and effect realities we now live in, I set out to write a book that examines the correlation between the sins of Bushanomics and our financial and societal downgrading, which we passively accept as the political neoconservatives (corporate fascists) continue to shift wealth to the top while creating strife for everyday middle-class Americans. Just being an ordinary person listening to ordinary news and reading ordinary articles has revealed statements and media sound bites that say incredible things, yet get forgotten as soon as they are aired. We are all weary of hearing incomplete stories that leave out solutions and conclusions and thereby thwart progress. The media continues to downplay the role that the cheap interest Happy Pill has played in destroying the economy and the middle class.
Whether you are American, Arabian, European, Asian, or an expat living abroad, you will appreciate the book’s message about what has really happened to real people during economic meltdown. There is another obvious, seldom discussed connection which goes beyond what any fiscally-irresponsible neoconservative could ever imagine, admit or own—wars and spending. Wars don’t only cost a country its cash and moral ground. The continuous, ongoing and projected expenditures also foul the credibility of a nation’s ability to rebound and keep things under control. Wars have become a bad business practice and the rest of the world is unwilling to continue to turn its back on the subsequent failure of an economy. America is no longer financially viable and has become a bad investment to the eyes of our global colleagues. Yet, we must ask, what happened to the truth along the way to this change?
Go to a bookstore, pick up a magazine, read the paper, listen to the news on radio or TV. It’s the same message over and over: what is this mysterious, missing link to why America (and the planet) is in such a debt crisis? How could this have happened? How could “experts” and seasoned politicians have so easily misled us? If we rely on mainstream media for the clues, all we will get are the same rhetorical, corporate-friendly answers. It seems we are all asked now to forgive corporate crime, forgive government dysfunction, and just “move on” to a dark and uncertain future while the rich get richer and the rest of us stay uneducated, unemployed, and uninsured.
Even in major, respected journals, I’ve recently endured reading articles that pose the question of who is to blame for America’s financial downgrade, as though it is some kind of mystery to a nation inundated with media amnesia. To major news media, there seems to be no answer to be found in the midst of fog and rewrites of history. The question is, and should be, can any media entity finally make the obvious connection between the dubious corporate actions that took place behind the shroud of reckless wars, and the lack of cash and credibility from which The United States now suffers? It may be easier to blame it all on Obama instead of backing up to the source to examine cause and effect, as we should do when solving any problem. This is where the “Happy Pill” as a metaphor for cheap interest comes into play, and is presented as a thesis in chapter two.
I’ve enjoyed writing this book as an evolving narrative that started as a few pages of journal notes about bizarre home renovation experiences in rural America, and developed into stories that observe political and media manipulations that reflect back onto, and verify, those firsthand stories. Like any personal project that involves a brainstorming process, it amazed me to see the book come together and how all the stories relate to one another through a thematic, common ground—politicians, real estate agents, rednecks, bankers, media moguls—around every bend, these characters have equally caused the states of entropy and forgetfulness that seem to have plagued us particularly over the last decade. This strange but true nonfiction evolved from miles of late-night note taking and jotting down ideas while driving, complimented by simple observation of ordinary daily news events that required a closer look. Anyone who has ever lost a dollar in the past ten years will be able to resonate with these revealing stories.
The Happy Pill is a critical examination of the forces behind the huge transfer of wealth that was executed by the same non-progressive politicians who are still hard at work in their ongoing efforts to impoverish Americans while we sit idly ignoring the numbers behind the nation’s debt and expenditure miasma. The book focuses not only on my personal journey as a squashed real estate investor caught in the drama of a corporatized government’s manipulation of an economy, but also on the demise of the middle-class lifestyle and the resulting penalties that financial meltdown imposes on real people. Please enjoy this eye-opening, wide-perspective, fresher version of what has really happened to us all, and tell your friends and colleagues about it!
-John Stines
Washington, DC
August 2011
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1
2000: The Real Odyssey
During the presidential election debates of the year 2000, I wondered what kind of noise would result from smashing my old television with a baseball bat. The major news networks were constantly resurrecting what sounded like the old, neoconspeak from the past. What was this cryptic sense of amnesia? How could I watch the broadcast and put up with this decayed, non-progress talk that everyone hoped had been put to rest with Reagan and the first Bush? I searched frantically for my 30-inch, 1972 Pete Rose Hillerich & Bradsby baseball bat I had saved from Little League days. To my dismay, the green mold on the bat was as scary as the stale, conservative, political ideology being recited, so I tossed it in the garbage and turned towards the TV with a new game plan.
I looked over at my friend who was visiting from out of town and silently held up a solitary finger as a gesture of caution while crinkling my eyebrows in preparation for personal revolution. He watched in anticipation as I quickly rotated into a solid, powerful karate punch only two inches from the moderator’s face on the TV screen and let out a huge, Jean-Claude Van Damme-style “Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” The seemingly endless, viva voce release started down low in the stomach, traveled up past the ribs and into the esophagus, through the larynx and out into the room and through the open window into the neighbors’ living rooms. How could media moguls let us all down like this and do so at such an important moment?
“W” Bush gave me a headache as he stammered through questions in a disconnected, weird way. How could someone run for president while being such a poor public speaker? At the beginning of the campaign, even the reporters didn’t take his candidacy seriously. Yet this Jack in the Box was very dangerous. He seemed to have failed in everything he dabbled, but still inherited every opportunity that money and family power could buy. Wasn’t this the guy who couldn’t turn a profit on the Texas Rangers baseball team? Didn’t he grow up terribly privileged? Wasn’t he a bit of a party boy? Just the way he talked was unbelievable. What kind of language game was he playing? Why didn’t the other candidates just laugh him off the stage? Here was a politician trying to spout the typical talk, yet he possessed none of the usual presentation skills displayed by his adversaries. This contestant was no Aristotle. Al Gore tried to expound on Bush’s incompetence until his advisors unfortunately told him to tone it down. Something very strange was going on . . . something very undisclosed.
The news media couldn’t believe the numbers on the voting. Gore should have taken the election in a landslide. Instead, Bush kept gaining more and more ground. Who voted for this charlatan? Were there that many Americans who still thought Ronald Reagan’s version of neoconservative economic ruin, aka “Reaganomics,” was a great thing? Had even the news media forgotten the past? At this first sign of manipulation and the resulting, collective memory loss, it was apparent the country was not going to be allowed to pay attention to its own history. The votes kept piling in until the recount issue surfaced. This was truly a divided nation, as indicated by the archaic system of electoral vote totals going to Bush, and the clearly more modern, popular vote majority going to Gore. Running mate and henchman Dick Cheney struck most sensible people as a villainous comic book character—a patent representative of evil. While in office, he would assume the role very well through his Machiavellian actions and convenient interpretations of justice.
Figuratively speaking, these politicians in the 2000 election started the Red vs. Blue State Gentleman’s Political Civil War. The newscasters didn’t seem to get it though. Why did they keep talking like this was a situation where the election would cleanly unfold and reveal the new president, and the country would then magically and instantly “unite” and “move on” towards some expedient and abstract idea of progress? After all, the loser had won the popular vote. If Bush were to get into office after this fiasco, life would be hell for the conscious half of the population as well as for the unconscious remaining half who voted for him. With those comatose votes, the scary reality set in: Could so many people really relate to xenophobia, or to going into debt for healthcare and education, or to supporting unjustifiable wars that could lead to bankrupting the nation? Whatever would unfold, the news media would surely steamroll over reality and present a picture of a functioning government.
After watching Al Gore be forced to throw out motions for a recount of the questionable Florida voting scenario, the very first post-election thought I had was to somehow leave the country. Finally, corporate fascism seemed to have safely arrived. I wondered if I had enough contacts still left in Germany. I got on the phone to get the scoop from Sabine, a resourceful friend who had welcomed many visitors to Munich over the years.
“Well,” she said, “the Euro is so ridiculous. A coffee used to be two Deutschmarks and now it’s just two Euros. That’s like twice as much overnight!”
“This doesn’t sound promising,” I answered.
“It’s just really becoming expensive here because none of the conversions are really right,” she added.
The only reliable way to immigrate to Europe appeared to be through marriage, or a very specialized job that a European couldn’t do. With the EU and one new, common currency, such a position was very unlikely to find. Who could stay in America with this unbelievable election?
Former alcoholic and born-again Christian Bush got to work quickly. Faith-Based Initiatives came into vogue.
I phoned Sabine again for one last attempt to hear something positive about the outside world. “This country is going to become a religious right nation with gun shows during church suppers,” I mumbled into the phone as it hung off my unshaven face. “Get me out of America . . . and out of Kentucky!”
“It just isn’t sensible!” she replied with the typical, German logic tone. “Nobody here can believe that this guy is going to be in office . . . and what is this thing I hear, ‘Faith-Based Initiatives’? Every speech I’ve heard from him uses that phrase over and over again. Furchtbar!”
Before this neo-religious trend, I used to run several different businesses to keep cash coming in. My phone rang frequently with calls for work. I balanced everything so I could produce and sell artwork while keeping the home improvement contracting jobs flowing. All the hard work in the ‘90s to create a small publishing venue had been paying off with steady checks from orders. Suddenly, I had a $25,000 savings account! Finally, after 15 years of saving, I could think about opening an art gallery or small coffee shop with a loan. Under Clinton, a balanced national budget had done great things for small business owners. However, Bush’s inauguration spelled big trouble for my customary and proven efforts to muster local business clientele; people started using super-church directories to decide whom to hire in lieu of reputation and references. As early 2001 moved on and people were still believing in the economy’s infallibility, I tried to accept living in America.
I began planning. A first trip to the popular destination of the day, Asheville, North Carolina, revealed that opening a business there was something only the ridiculous Trustafarians could get away with. The place was infested with privileged white kids and their strangely matted hair they had adopted from some Reggae festival. What were they trying to imitate? The scene looked like a revival of Neanderthal culture and back-to-the-woods philosophy gone wrong. After a day of “tuning in” with the genuinely destitute panhandlers around town, the Groovers would speed off in their Mercedi or Lexi to the upper-class safety of the mountaintop paradise homes of their Boomer parents. There was no real economy there or any sizable, educated population base. What Asheville did have, however, was an unmistakably appreciating real estate market. Everyone wanted to move there and change their lives, or retire in the fresher air at the 2100 ft. elevation where “Altitude is Attitude.” Even though I wasn’t rich enough to open a gallery, it made sense to assume there could be lots of work renovating houses. Asheville just had this safe haven energy that felt like something good would happen.
Then came 9/11.
Next came the unjustifiable wars.
Then the same guy who brought us “Make the Pie Higher” came up with “The War on Terror,” “WMDs,” “The Axis of Evil,” “Mission Accomplished,” and his unforgettable “With Us Or Against Us” propaganda. The President began to work the corporate media machine to its fullest extent in order to support his emerging agenda. It seemed like the world was doomed from this lack of consciousness. Soon, an arcane sense of darkness and shadow began to prevail over progress. The smoke of evil filled the air and the lungs of anyone who crossed its path. People stopped spending, stopped hiring, stopped thinking, and began to live through either a sense of hope (those opposed to Bush), or entitlement (those with him). For Bush, to declare a war based on vengeance onto an unsuspecting Iraq or Afghanistan was the mission. Most importantly, according to Bush, “God Told Me To”—an excuse for evil actions that statistically is uttered only by seriously disturbed criminals. So in his mind, as he stood aboard the USS Mission Accomplished aircraft carrier while strapped into a borrowed flight suit and looking like an action figure doll, his shortsighted vision had been achieved. Now he could go back home to Texas and play golf while everybody on the planet suffered because of the decisions of American voters.
As a self-employed person, I could quickly feel the economic bite start to take its course during the first few Bush years. The phone stopped ringing. Business cards didn’t help any longer. The payoff for decades of hard work was coming to an abrupt and obvious end. My bread and butter contracting business failed after 15 years of continuous success. Ten years of publishing business orders ceased completely since retailers could not reliably sell simple, tourism-related postcard products any longer. Photography customers of any kind became impossible to find. People had become scared of spending money in a country already well on the road to bankruptcy. Three businesses down, and how many more to go? How many times could anyone reinvent themselves in order to survive during war-happy Bushanomics?
In the fallout that resulted from the Bush presidency, the express train to progress has been derailed, and the tracks ahead have been destroyed by villains. Stuck at the station, our economic lives are trapped in some abstract space between the past and the present.
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2
The Happy Pill
What is it about the American economy that keeps people looking for economic anti-depressants? While George Bush Jr. brought in the Wizard of Nothing Alan Greenspan to administer and hype the daily dose of cheap interest through CNN and other major news networks, it was clear what BushenCheney were doing. Even from the perspective of an ordinary, middle-class person, it seemed clear that there were at least three, quite possibly purposely-intended results derived from this low-interest Happy Pill.
Firstly, they created a simple diversion from how capital was really getting spent on war by offering up federal money at low, unrealistic rates to lure people into unconscious spending and home equity fantasies. Greenspan would do this in front of committees and cameras and sound off like the plan was so carefully thought out and studied that it would only produce a more positive economy. After all, wasn’t that what the “Fed” was supposed to do? Don’t we implicitly just trust seasoned, experienced leaders who are called upon for their guidance and good judgment? The ploy was presented as though a wise, masterful economist was protecting the nation’s economy while somehow balancing the irresponsible spending with magically low interest rates. Who was this guy? Didn’t he start with Reagan? Somehow he seemed very Goldman Sachs-friendly. After the damage from Bushanomics, he would be cited by many as one of the major characters in destroying the economy. For the meantime, people loved their fix, because in this country we love to ignore the financial realities that come with borrowing.
Without failure, whenever Greenspan talked, people started spending more and more borrowed money. It was somewhere between Timothy Leary and Jim Jones’ Koolaid—accept the delusion and get high for a while and possibly die from it later. The domino effect from irresponsible lending melted down the economy through the insane interest rate game that fueled the engines of the financial industry pyramid scheme loans, and no one in the media dared to step up and bust him, or the Bush regime, for this diversion. How could such an obvious connection between cheap interest and these toxic assets go so unnoticed? How could the news media refrain from seeing the whole process as a “keep ‘em stupid and distracted” propaganda maneuver and fail to share that with real people? Minimally, the media could have discussed how lenient, toxic loans were being pawned off in a deregulated market system well before companies, investors and consumers all went bust. Sadly, the trick to the scheme was to not talk about it until it became too late: “There just isn’t anything we can do about it!” said the banks and financial wizards in the aftermath. Too many people over-invested in the preoccupation and fantasy of vicarious home ownership and the promise of potential home equity.
Secondly, a very interesting and logical chain of events unfolds when looking at the role of credit default swaps in fulfilling the goals of the Happy Pill cheap interest scheme. Certainly, during the reign of a president whose favorite phrase was “not on my watch,” it is ironic that while on his watch, we were issued cheap interest to stimulate overspending and excessive, ill-issued home loans that investors viewed primarily as chips in a casino. First, the home loans and equity debt cannot be paid, then the speculators step in and profit from having already bet on the failure of the loans. Accordingly, the insurance companies go broke paying off the speculators and finally, we bail out, or make public holding of, the insurance companies and banks that issued the original loans and sold them off as toxic assets. While the top one percent were playing their credit default swap game in the Wall Street casino by betting on the success and failure of various financing schemes, the engines of the cheap interest ploy served to fuel this rampage and keep real people in the shadows. Whenever we have people betting on the failure of the mortgage industry, we will definitely see top one percent people cashing in on that failure.
Somehow, our leaders just turned their backs on the past mistakes the country has made and decided in 2000 to make bucket shop-style betting legal once again in America. This cleared the path for the Wall Street casino to evolve into the derivative machine it became. Performing this action just prior to the cheap interest era was the fuse the government lit to start the profits party for the few at the top.
Unfortunately, for the rest of the world, the international financial marketplace became burdened by the same phony derivatives and overzealous lending practices that originated in the United States. Greenspan’s bomb spread worldwide to damage the economy of many countries. The negative result from putting Bush in office amidst an increasingly deregulated U.S. marketplace was really starting to show up in the deterioration of global economic health.
The third ploy behind cheap interest can be seen in the form of rising corporate profits and diminishing jobs. Since the Fed refused to increase interest rates and the U.S. dollar got weaker and weaker on the currency market, corporations doing business offshore that realized profits in foreign currencies could exchange that cash back into U.S. dollars at a better and better rate. Fewer and fewer employees doing more and more work were considered to be the lucky few employed people who further enhanced corporate profits. Although typically perceived as a minor, behind-the-scenes effect, this is precisely the kind of invisible corporate action that helped to explain the impotent attitude of the Fed towards creating value in the currency. Takeover Wizard Bernanke’s scholarly pretense about recovery and his buggy whip-style insistence on a cheap dollar truly needed examination.
In August of 2011, we heard the Fed announce more low-interest monetary policy to continue through 2013, thereby keeping the dollar weak while claiming inflation would be controlled, or domestic manufacturing would increase. Currency battles have not solved the economic problems that could be solved by some responsible administration and implementation of properly-targeted stimulus plans. Out of the frying pan and into the fryer for Americans.
The resulting stimulus packages initiated by Bush and carried out by Obama were necessary to stave off complete economic meltdown. How else could the chameleonic financial system be glued back together after extending itself into unrecognizable forms like a shapeshifter from a sci-fi movie? The new question was, what did people really expect stimulus money to do? Very few jobs aside from New Deal-style, sidewalk busting projects could be created, and the majority of the cash needed to go to banks to avoid closing them. Now that’s simple economics. When the framing of a house collapses, it takes the roof and walls with it. So Alan’s plan burst the bubble and took the real estate market down with it. The spending sins of the war-happy government followed by the manipulation of the consumer and the attempt at correction through the transfer of hundreds of billions in assets to banks just completed the weird cycle of keeping the top one percent rich.
People failed to admit the country was in the second Great Depression because this time, the banks were wealthy and were sitting on massive amounts of cash. Instead of trying to keep us from rushing the doors and withdrawing our money, the banks no longer even wanted our deposits. “There’s nobody qualified enough to pay back loans,” they said as they closed the doors at 4:00 p.m. after another easy day. Geithner may have wondered why banks were not lending, but he and the rest of the bailout team apparently did not set stringent enough rules for the banks to require them to make loans. When bad business practices are rewarded and become further unregulated, there can be no change in a failing economy.
Meanwhile, Americans cannot fund small business plans to create jobs, obtain home loans, or even have any lingering faith in cash holdings from their retirement funds ever paying interest. The banks receive virtually interest-free prime lending rate funds and then complain that there is no profit to make on lending cheap money since interest rates are so low—back to the Happy Pill damage.
A friend from the former East Germany once ironically commented to me in 1991 on the lack of basic services and infrastructure in America compared to Europe when he said, “The United States is simply a Third World country with a credit card.” His comments now seem minimally visionary, if not prophetic.
In this fiasco, Bush and Cheney became the two-headed monster that flew the Enola Gay across the skies to deliver their Happy Pill en masse. After leaving office, their places in the self-built Parthenon of Imperialism waited for them so they could enjoy their wealth and power while the rest of us now sit in dismay sorting through our diminished and ruined assets. Even if you have been a responsible homeowner who pays the mortgage and sees through the drug, your financial security is now in jeopardy. In this massive economic fallout, typical middle-class Americans must embark on a new and difficult road to save themselves. It isn’t terribly difficult to understand. For just once, why couldn’t news media just finally go ahead and say it?
The Bush Administration and their Happy Pill caused the economic meltdown in America.
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3
How Else Could I Make Money?
Losing three successful businesses already to a questionable economy made me focus my remaining skills towards the paradox of creating a full-blown, home renovation enterprise so I could work for myself and gain some assets. It would take a willingness to buy and sell a property and take on smart risks. For some reason, the real estate market was still doing well around 2004, and money from banks was just magically growing on trees. Anyone could get a loan—even self-employed persons. This would be a way to survive and save profits to later finance a new, midlife, dream business. This wasn’t Happy Pill abuse, this was hard work.
Up in the altitude and attitude, I decided to finally give it a go and learn the ropes. I volunteered to work on a large, two-house renovation project with a girlfriend in Asheville. She had owned the property for several years, but she couldn’t seem to muster the wherewithal to pop the potential and add value and wow factor. Although every bit a black cloud in a loose sweater, she was very smart and tough, and could lay a floor, bang nails, and haul plywood better than any illegal immigrant worker. Midway through the project, she experienced a complete meltdown because the neighbor’s dogs had killed her cat. She woke up one morning and suddenly decided to quit her job, have a yard sale, get rid of her car, throw out her books, distance herself from everyone, cut her hair, and buy some awful, ‘70s-style wire glasses. She wanted to sell the property ASAP. She wanted to emigrate out of the country ASAP. I could tell she needed to move away from the redneck neighborhood to a more progressive, smarter place. There was no zoning in this county, and because of the mixed bag of low-end and high-end architecture, one could wake up with nutty people living too close to the investment. Moving would be worth a try.
After completing unfathomable amounts of work, we stuck to the agenda and sold the property, afterwards moving on to the Charlottesville, Virginia area where there was a fine university and a funky yoga center in the woods. Even a casual visit to a gelato shop or grocery store revealed how much smarter people were there in comparison to Asheville. I bought the house this time, and worked alone on it continuously for five months. I intended to keep it with the hope of finding a feasible second home for the renovation business idea. Inevitably, the trickle income from the fading art show business was diminishing. We would have to soon move to a better place to jump-start our economy. The real estate market was peaking in 2005, so I decided to sell the property and complete our timely joint visa application to live and work in lovely New Zealand. She saw through Bush like any sensible person, so immigrating there seemed to be the best solution for forgetting and leaving behind what was happening to America. After I took care of months of paperwork, emails, police certificates, medical exams and payments while the Angel of Joylessness relaxed at a three-month silent meditation, the joint application got approved and we were ready to send in our passports. I put the small, colorful, well-lit house on the market and it sold quickly. It was tough to see it go, but moving abroad and getting out of America was the plan now.
Shortly before preparing to leave the country with a two-year work visa, the angry, disconnecting person surfaced again. Separation was in order for her new agenda. What was with this wounded animal? Didn’t we already prove that we had trust between us when I put in countless hours of voluntary work on her house? Weren’t we planning a pact for an immigration visa together no matter what the circumstances? She had completely sat out my renovation due to injury and lack of interest. Precisely at the opportune moment to go to New Zealand, she reneged and took off like a perfect saboteur. Subsequently, as the secondary applicant, my visa got canceled due to the change of relationship status. She moved on to a well-paid medical job, and I was left with no home and nothing that was producing much income. It was late 2005 and I knew there was just a short amount of time remaining to attempt to make a profit on a real estate project. This time I thought I would buy a house with the sole intent to flip it. I hit the road to return to my unfortunate hometown of Louisville, Kentucky and spent some months there utterly confused by the lame property prospects and the spotty calls for contractor work. Jumping into something and making some money somehow seemed to make sense. Then came the worst event of my life . . .
The Day of No Return happened one Saturday morning. A woodworker buddy of mine, Jack, phoned me and the banter began.
“Hey, there’s this house for auction out in the county,” he announced in a loud, booming voice over the phone. “My carpenter buddy Mike says it’s the best one he’s ever seen out there. No rot, good bones. He’d buy it but he doesn’t have the money!”
“Why the hell would I want to buy a house out there when I just sold a good one in Virginia?” I barked. I had it figured out. My intuition had spoken. End of story. Had I not driven through that little town once and seen a pro-Bush sign in a churchyard that made me wonder if perhaps David Letterman should feature this place on his show?
The insistent friend kept on with his foolish banter. “It wouldn’t hurt just to go out and see it,” he bargained.
I didn’t really believe this. He always tried to throw me into his pot of self-loathing soup where he swam around while reciting bogus mantras like “As artists we’re at the bottom of the food chain.”
“Not interested,” I responded. “I don’t want to spend the time . . . don’t have the energy for this renovation torture any more. The house in Virginia was worth working on and trying to keep . . . ran out of work though . . . Kentucky . . . small town . . . seems sort of like Mayberry R.F.D. to me . . . I don’t know about that area.”
I was plenty smart but pretty confused about how to earn any dollars in a declining economy. The curbing of those three business activities in a few short Bush years had really left me vulnerable.
“Yeah, why don’t we just go out there tomorrow?” suggested Jack. “Maybe I’ll buy it instead.”
Now that sounded safe enough. After all, I liked looking at houses if other people were buying them. So the next day, we drove out to see the house. It was in a weird little crossroads town in the middle of tobacco and pleasure horse country. People seemed to be spread out enough so they wouldn’t be bothering anybody. The house was indeed as solid as Mike and Jack had suggested, and it boasted a good skeleton with little indication of any structural problems. It had the typical old plumbing, older heating, a solid roof, great woodwork and character spaces, and an awesome upstairs. Even the hallway was eight feet by thirty-five feet and felt like a cozy getaway. I could see through the many layers of old wallpaper with my super-duper renovator’s x-ray vision. After being somewhat impressed, I still had a creepy feeling and just told the friend, “No thanks.”
“Tell you what,” he rebutted over the phone the next day, “if you buy it, and you get sick of it, I’ll buy it back from you and add a ten percent profit.”
I could tell he was blowing smoke at me, both figuratively and literally. Jack played the character of a lost stoner type with a complete fear of intimacy or connection to people. He seemed to live in a trap of escapism and survivalist fantasies. The building where he worked and lived was always a nightmare of a mess and smelled like litter boxes. Listening to him talk reminded me of a blend of tough guy movie characters and countryside backyard banter. Jack was the halfway there, quasi-redneck who presented himself like he always knew what he was talking about. Although we were very different, our friendship was still based on trust and dedication. After all, we had grown up together around a mixed bag of personalities in the dark ages known as the ‘70s. Didn’t that count for something?
Caution lights still surfaced. Wasn’t this the same friend who had called me not once, but twice over the past few months to borrow money to pay a utility bill? Mysteriously, each request was for the same amount of $375, yet his power continued to stay on. I could tell that he smelled I had a decent bank account from my prior ass-busting work and savings, so I could only guess he was probably looking to score an ounce of weed with his “utility bill” loan. He had apparently borrowed cash for years from everyone kind enough to lend to him and had never paid much of it back. I refused to lend it. Regardless of his addictions, I trusted the guy’s opinion on home renovation because he had spent his entire life in this area of the country working on houses at all levels of quality. Could it be a decent flip? It would work only if I could do my usual thorough job and place it on a functional sales market.
My guts told me to continue the resistance to accept this house as a viable investment of my time, energy and money. Already laden with injuries from other renovations, I had sold my tools months ago. I was sick of renovation work, and sick to death of rednecks in these rural areas. When could I earn more money? Was there even a concept of bedroom community properties around here? I had to know first.
“I’ll tell you what,” started Jack, “in this area there is a triangle between these three metro areas. In that triangle you can’t go wrong. People want to live out in the country.” He hesitated and then expounded further on the myth. “Houses are going for higher and higher every day. I’d love to live out there. It’s the future . . . have an acre . . . grow your own food . . . survival.”
“Yeah, why don’t you buy it then?” I asked. He was starting to piss me off.
“Maybe I can . . . my sister may loan me the money . . . hell, I’ll bid against you!” he chuckled.
I knew he didn’t have the funds and he badly wanted to live in the country, even if only in some vicarious way. Unfortunately, I also trusted that he and his carpenter friend Mike were not feeding me a delusional tale about the area and its potential. Mike had said people there were silently wealthy and some farmer guy would probably write a check for the house and buy it for his daughter as a wedding present. That sounded like my kind of buyer, but was he joking? After all, to make profits on a house renovation, you have to do something someone else has been too lazy to do. None of it made any sense to me except for this amazing Triangle of Value thing. What was this concept? I realized the metro population on the points of the triangle were in crowded subdivisions with no land or rural space. I knew I could make a bedroom community house shine and pop and attract buyers. Wouldn’t some retired couple or the rich farmer just come out and snap it up like in Asheville or Charlottesville? I still needed convincing. Jack’s promise to buy it back was a wild story because his own chaotic building wouldn’t be selling anytime soon in order to free up his assets. Not even a sub-prime bank would give a loan to this guy.
Doomsday Number Two came next. We attended the auction and I reluctantly stood in the middle of a crowd of smokers and spat out what I thought to be a fair bid on the house. I felt like a puppet on strings being operated by the sense of desperation to create a job. Surely I could always put a sign in the yard to get rid of it if I decided not to keep it. It seemed affordable. How else could I create income? Playing resume toss with a watered-down c.v. with a B.A. degree wouldn’t help. Besides, this Triangle of Value legend seemed legitimate. At least in the other places I had jumped in and renovated, any solid and charismatic rural property within an hour’s driving distance from a metro area was as good as gold. Hearing theories about intrinsic value from a generally trusted friend made just enough sense to make the giant leap.
Three years later, still unsold, the fully-restored house sat in perfect, Pottery Barn condition. The 2000 square feet of renovations had cost me tons of cash and a few more chronic injuries to add to the list. Not a square centimeter was left untouched or unpolished. From the moisture vapor barrier on the foundation floor to the ventilator fan in the attic, this house was truly in move-in condition. Lookers were in awe, but none bought. The disaster of investing time and money had ruined me. There never was any markup potential in this place—even before the real estate meltdown. Doing fewer improvements to the house would have just resulted in an unloanable property sitting on the market.
“Oh yeah, just like I thought,” said Jack the Protean over the phone during the aftermath, “you just can’t easily sell a property in that location. If it were somewhere else, maybe, but around here, it just isn’t considered to be a good location.”
I was silent. He had certainly been unwilling to help out during the years of renovation and marketing. Unlike the stoner, I remembered our prior conversations about property value and locations. I would have pushed him out the window if he had been in the room. What happened to the Triangle of Value? This was more like the Devil’s Triangle and I was being sucked down into the abyss of financial and spiritual ruin. This rogue had talked up the house like it was a guaranteed gold mine on the resale market. His own fantasy to leave the drug slums and live in the country had turned him into a manipulative, self-interested, addict personality. When he wasn’t making up stories to score cash for dope, he was vicariously manipulating his six figure friend just for the slightest chance of owning the house himself. As for his carpenter buddy Mike, I would have saved a window for him too if he had ever shown up to lend a hand during the renovation.
This was the guy who opened the book that read my ruin. Eventually, I sold the house after those three long years and the closing date finally came. I had to terminate my friendship with Jack. I couldn’t take any more chances in the future dealing with this guy and his failure-to-thrive energy. This was simply cutting ties with toxic personalities. Yet in a small town with big pants, it wouldn’t be easy to get rid of someone. His brother ran a reliable cafe where I went weekly for an inspiring lunch. After telling him I sold the house, the bro immediately went into the same bogus blather that Jack had presented when The Mistake was made . . .
“Why don’t you go over here in the center of town and buy up one of the 60K houses?” he started. “You can put ten into it and people are selling them for a hundred.”
This family must have had a gene missing somewhere. He was suggesting to invest again in a supposedly gentrified neighborhood that was mostly full of fourth-generation, German–American, white trash mutts. I had already learned many years earlier about this particular property myth that sat on rotten, shotgun house foundations. Here came another hurdle, but in this race, I jumped over it like Jackie Joyner-Kersee in a heptathlon.
“Dude, that was eight years ago!” I responded. He shrugged with a clueless, almost apologetic look on his face. “I wouldn’t renovate another house in this place if it were given to me for free. Why don’t you get one yourself if they’re so valuable?”
I walked out and never went back to the cafe. So much for my favorite sandwich.
Aside from the aspirations of good intent, if it wasn’t for that tragic Saturday morning phone call and the history with Jack of trust and friendship since high school, the mistake of entering this insane parallel universe would never, ever have happened. Who knows where I’d be? Our connection would have been better left hiding behind the impersonal world of Facebook instead of manifesting itself in real time. After selling, I took refuge in the knowledge that other people were going bankrupt and foreclosures were only increasing. Some people in the industry said the number of repossessed homes nationwide would go from under a million to as many as twelve million in the coming years.
Selling made me feel like I was in the group of the privileged few who could now look forward to assessing their losses. Three long years of property ownership led to a labyrinth of weird experiences that seemed to only reflect on the times. In the fog of the new millennium and its first decade of bizarre events, manipulative media and bad politics, all avenues led to the same result—the destruction of a middle-class lifestyle.
******
4
Chicken Dinner
During the presidential campaigns of doomsday election year 2000, one could not go to a bookstore without noticing some very strange inventory on the shelves. Publishers were pushing similarities in a good light between the flunkey G.W. Bush and the “hero” Reagan. Amnesia had set into this sector of the GOP-controlled media and publishing industry. Bookstores were amuck with these absurd hardbacks laden with glossy photos of these two grinning guys. Had people forgotten who invented the neoconservative movement in America? Hadn’t we progressed way, way past this problem by realizing how Reagan had nearly bankrupted the country and caused huge problems with our national identity throughout the globe? This couldn’t be real. This couldn’t be happening again.
In my local paper, some articles were reprinted from larger papers about the glorification of the Reagan years and all the things Ron had done to further advance the world. The premise was that Bush would be just as good a president as the actor had been. I sent in an editorial to an independent, local, cultural-happenings newspaper to question why journalists in major newspapers would glorify an association between this candidate Bush and the “legacy” of Ronald Reagan. What was the legacy anyway, and why would we want the same problems we had throughout the ‘80s? Was idolizing a movie star with a grandfather image any different than enabling a somewhat suspicious and already mysteriously pious candidate? Some of the articles I had read made the obvious blunder in crediting Reagan for single-handedly bringing down the Berlin Wall simply by standing there and asking Gorbachev to “bring down this wall!”
Television functioned as social media for revolution during this Cold War heyday, and unlike in the West, it was an effective tool for change. In the DDR, seeing fellow citizens protest on television in a widespread, public broadcast was an amazing, first-time event. This was an unprecedented, nonviolent change that Reagan’s big talk did not cause in any direct way. Sure he was a reporter at the boxing match, but he certainly was never the referee. Yet, what better way for a Y2K election team to create false credentials than by forging an association between the privileged, joke of a candidate Bush, and the ex-President Reagan. After all, both were fake cowboys.
Plenty of things are underlying and obvious in the media, but in the raging red South, things are different. The editor of the paper printed my letter that outlined these issues, so he and I both braced ourselves for wacky rebuttals.
“I interrupted my chicken dinner to read this crazy editorial,” responded the protester. “Who does this guy think he is, some historian?”
The writer continued to explain that Ronald Reagan was a great president, and Bush would be even better. He probably had carried a picture of Reagan in his wallet for eight years. How dare I formulate an opinion based on experience and research as opposed to just opting for sitting still and believing the bookstore bunk.
The chicken guy had no idea I had also done extensive research on the former Stasi police, and during five trips to Berlin both before and after the Wall, I had compiled quite a bit of information on the former East German lifestyle and the elements of government control. I even had an article published in The Christian Science Monitor International Daily Newspaper in 1990 that profiled an East German academic who had made a life or death escape through the Berlin Wall. While researching the story, I had the opportunity to literally stand in the former Stasi headquarters building and interview real East Germans who offered endless amounts of information on how the Wall really came down. Most felt that financial failure was the cause, and the protests and broadcasts of those events, which were authorized through direct orders from the top, literally opened up the Wall. With a grant from a university, I followed up with a research report on the new museum that evolved from the efforts of Ossis (East Germans) to dismantle the organization. They all agreed the fall of the Wall had more to do with internal politics and economics than with Reagan’s political talk.
What did I know? Who the hell wuz I, some kind o’ intellectual type person? How dare I suggest that American presidents don’t always have control over the rest of the world!
So began in the year 2000 the illusion that an Ivy Leaguer “Texan” who posed as a rancher/cowboy and couldn’t speak his own native language properly would become a “leader” and a “great president.” The red/blue division later magnified during the faulty election would illustrate that in America, there were two types of voters, and they will never agree. Evil and good really do exist and really are choices to consider when making decisions.
I remember my friend Justin telling me a story about a local dipstick who came up to him after overhearing his conversation about people needing to participate in conservation efforts and recycling programs in the area. The guy suddenly got in his face and stammered around with an unfocused glance while swaggering strangely from side to side.
“You think you’re so smart, I’ll beat you up!” yelled the yokel.
Bush appealed to the very nature of the redneck—an outdated sense of entitlement, lack of achievement, low intelligence, inability to orate well, and the ever so important political tool of addiction to fear. The mantra was “with us or against us,” just like the guy who wanted to beat up somebody because that person had a sense of environmental responsibility.
Justin didn’t have to use his martial arts skills on the local simpleton. The guy was so full of fear about hearing the truth that something just didn’t manifest in his rampage. Maybe he needed to get home to his chicken dinner and forget all about it. I wondered if there was a proven link between eating too much fried chicken and amnesia.
In the glory of the new millennium, a broad movement towards fear and evasion of the truth had begun in America. People would soon forget what it felt like to be able to pay their bills and find jobs. Unemployed professionals would learn how to dumb down their resumes to apply for low-paying jobs beneath their qualifications only to be hit broadside by ageism in the work place. Corporations would further downsize and demand more work from fewer employees to ensure higher profits. Media spin would replace memory while we all began to forget our true past. Rather than to be questioned from a perspective of ethics, law and economics, war would become far too commonplace and accepted. Too many bad things would begin to happen in this new century through this shady election and its companions of bad politics and corporate-friendly media.
Who was this person now coming into office as president while the majority of the voting population in a democracy sat in disbelief?
******
5
The Rise of the American Redneck
After Bush became president, it appeared that being a redneck in America was some sort of desirable quality or advantage of belonging to a low-end social club. This was the beginning of the Rise of the American Redneck.
How is it that all these yokels can behave in such a similar fashion? Is it an evolutionary thing, or is it just a recent cultural development? Whichever, or whatever, America is filled with them. A sense of self-loathing and ignorance floats off their surfaces, but what is most annoying is that unfaltering sense of entitlement that all these hayseeds have. The cable networks seem to have an endless supply of redneck-focused reality show themes and blue-collar satire comedy acts that people conversely take seriously as a promotional statement, rather than as a critique of their subculture. Rednecks resonate with the very comedians and skits that are making fun of them.
As a tyke visiting my cousin in rural Kentucky, I first developed my polarity with rednecks. We were standing in the corner of the yard playing with a lifelike, six-foot toy snake that would realistically recoil its head while holding it from the tail. A dark storm cloud was approaching while the civil defense siren began to howl in the distance. As a pickup truck came firing along the road, we held the toy high above our 10-year-old heads to show the driver how brave we must be. The snake writhed dramatically as we acted scared while hiding our true sense of delight.
“What kind is it?!!” shouted the curious driver from his window, while assuming it was perfectly normal for kids to handle giant, poisonous snakes.
My cousin and I looked at each other for a long few seconds, each wondering what the other was going to say. I stepped up to the plate. “Rubber!” I shouted back.
The guy in the truck stomped on the metal and burned tire marks down the road while filled with inappropriate fury and anger towards little kids who were just playing a joke. We stood on the corner laughing till we couldn’t breathe.
Suddenly, my aunt whipped open the aluminum storm door and shouted, “Kids! Git’n the house! The wind’s a’ comin’!”
We ran inside to the safety and familiarity of the bright, finished basement and its thick walls where we were safe from the snake man.
Just like years ago, in an unchanging world, rednecks are always vicious and loud. What comes out of their vehicle’s tailpipe is what lies trapped in the hostile, angst-ridden souls of these people. The most troublesome vehicle in the fleet of noisemakers is the “hopped-up” diesel pickup with double wheels on the rear. Usually they’re made in basic, limited colors like black, red or white. The huge, chrome, twin exhaust pipes stick up between the bed and cab of the six-footed monster truck so everybody can see and hear the ridiculous machine. When the simpleton inside guns the motor and flies down the road, it makes a strange, spitting noise that mixes in with the incredibly loud exhaust note. It’s a snarl that works well to express this type of personal, rural anarchy. These nihilistic country fools have their big trucks so they can be big people on the big road in the tiny town.
Renovating a house in a small town will also expose one to plenty of loud exhaust pipes and angry country people. After a year of daily spending and 3000 hours of slaving away and still not having a buyer, I thought I would try renting out the place until it could sell. Such was the plan.
“Uh, is that rent for real on craigslist, or is it too high . . . maybe that’s why it’s been listed so long?” wrote the nosy party in an email. The rent was barely even above what a small two-bedroom house would fetch in the area.