The problem with the $700 billion Wall Street bailout that Congress failed to pass on Monday isn't that it was 12 votes short. It isn't that President Bush couldn't sell it to us better. The problem is that it violates the two opposing principles that have been grappling for control of the financial system of the United States for decades, and a basic urge of pitchfork-wielding populists everywhere not to be robbed blind by the wealthy and powerful.

On the liberal side, regulation was supposed to increase opportunities for lower income Americans, cushion individuals and institutions against sudden "market corrections," and curb risky investment behavior – who today would argue that the hedge fund managers didn't need a "nanny state?"

On the conservative side, the promise of deregulation – of government noninterference in the market – was to allow individual freedom to maximize profit as a way for growth to reach its maximum, in the understanding that this would benefit everyone.

The proposed bailout violated the liberal principle in that it rewarded risky behavior of investors and sent the bill to the non-investing majority of Americans.

It violated the conservative principle in that it reduced individual freedom – does every member of your family have $2300 lying around to contribute to this? – and embodied government interference in the market.

Even more than violating ideological principles, the proposed bailout offended the American people. We root for the underdog, vote for the candidates we feel are most like us, and fight like hell to protect our property. We called Congress in huge numbers, mostly demanding that the Wall Street investors go somewhere else for a handout.

This is an uncertain age. We've seen fortunes made out of thin air, and trusted institutions vanish into it. We've been coached to be afraid of shadowy forces, and treated as suspects, supposedly for our own protection. We're confused and uncertain about what our world will look like in a generation, a decade, or just after the election. A lot of us aren't sure where we will be living, or how to protect ourselves.

Maybe the economists who tell us the average American needs this bailout are right. How can we know? The same people who got us into this mess are now telling us they know the way out, and that we have to give them our money, trust them, and look the other way while they work their magic.

But he only sort of magic we've seen from these people is the magic that gave them private jets and us foreclosure notices.

And we remember that while the investment bankers were buying their seventh homes and giving their lavish parties, there was no money for repairing bridges in Minneapolis, maintaining levees in New Orleans, or researching alternative fuels.

A lot of the people being asked to pay are the underpaid teachers, the out of work truck drivers, the vanishing small farmers and the unprotected workers that footed the bill for the excesses of deregulated banking, energy speculation (remember Enron?), and the offshoring and outsourcing of Americans' livelihood. Now that the bill has come due, the well-heeled investors suddenly want everyone to share in their fortunes.

Maybe if we all had a share in the profits as well as the costs we'd put our pitchforks away and support the plan.

What does the proposed Paulson bailout mean? We don't get the scale.

700 billion dollars, or $700,000,000,000 means:

... $2,293 bailout per citizen (today's US Census projection)
... $933,333 bailout per foreclosure (RealtyTrac rough figure of 750,000)
... $9,342 bailout per homeowner (2005 US Census figure)

Couldn't we just lend to each mortgage lender the amount of outstanding debt on each of its foreclosed homes, which would have to be a lot less on average than the $933,333 of the Paulson plan, with the money to be refunded to the US Treasury when the house sold, plus a share of any increase in the house's value? Wouldn't that (a) cost less in the short run, (b) keep families in their homes, (c) bolster the housing market and (d) restore a portion of the loans to the Treasury in a few years' time?

I was checking my spelling this morning for an email I had drafted - nothing serious, but I am an editor - when I came across this embarrassing misspelling of embarrassing. It's a tough word. Just remember the feeling that your embarrassment will never end. That should remind you that all possible doubled consonants are doubled.

Okay, maybe that only works for grammar geeks like me.

Discord is the name of the game. In the philosophy of discordianism, "fnord" stands for a conditioned reflex of fear that prevents effective engagement with

Intelligent people have wrongly asserted that McCain chose Palin to fortify the Republican conservative base. This is only a small part of it.

Others have claimed he chose her to grab the headlines and the momentum and ride the polls. That would be clever, but not clever enough to carry the election, which is what the Republican strategists want to do.

Many have fallen for the ruse that McCain chose Palin to steal away Hillary Clinton's supporters. This is a ruse, and not even a very good one, but it's got a lot of media traction.

McCain chose Palin to sow discord through fear. Nameless, unreasoning fear.

People who respect the separation of church and state fear her evangelical fervor.

People who want intelligent representatives in government fear a continuation of the Bush era of incompetent, misguided leadership.

People who want peace fear Palin's primitive support for war on the basis of identification, culture, and lies.

People who want honesty in government recoil at Palin's obvious ethical and legal issues.

People who want a return to prosperity and a more fair sharing of wealth fear an unreflecting continuation of the Bush pattern of tax reform, which shifts the burdens to the lower and middle classes, and the benefits to the already wealthy.

All of these fears and concerns are blinders. They are barriers. Break through.

The policies are not the issue.

Take a look at the outright dishonesty of the McCain-Palin ticket. If we did not have barriers in front of our eyes, would people not see the lies? The lies are celebrated as attitude, as elements of identification (she's a "hockey mom," not an "elitist," so facts don't matter), as proof of the media's bias, etc.

The facts don't matter. Truth doesn't matter. War and peace and starving veterans under bridges don't matter.

They don't matter because we have been conditioned. The majority of Americans are unable to navigate information about public affairs. We've been miseducated, misled, and misinformed for so long, we can't even see it anymore.

Remember "The American President?"
- Lewis Rothschild: People want leadership. And in the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership, Mr. President. They're so thirsty for it, they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.
- President Andrew Shepherd: Lewis, we've had Presidents who were beloved who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand 'cause they're thirsty. They drink the sand 'cause they don't know the difference.

And they don't know the difference because they are conditioned to think that the sand is water, and that it should be water, and that it's always been water.

"We've always been at war with East Asia," haven't we? How would we know? Orwell saw to a future in which the elites existed for their own self-preservation as elites, and they found the way to remain in charge was to keep people off guard, always on alert, always frightened into submission, for so long they weren't aware any longer that what they were feeling was fear.

FDR was right. "… the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

He was right, but we should go further. This fear is so deep that we can no longer sense it. We're always at an elevated threat level with no specific information, stuck in a crouching stress position with our hands bound behind our back.

This has a psychological impact. Constant fear, like constant stress, interferes with reason. When you're paralyzed by fear, you can't run away or walk forward.

We're so tired we give up, we celebrate our crouching and bound hands as signs of strength and freedom. That's how we drink the sand. That's how we cheer for Sarah Palin. That's how we ignore the issues. There aren't any anymore, beyond control.

So what's a fnord? The idea of discordianism, which I hold with only figuratively, is that children are conditioned in schools to feel uncomfortable about the word "fnord" found in their books and newspapers, etc. "Fnord" isn't the real word, of course, but a stand-in for the concept. Then, when as adults we consume media, we do not read the "fnords," but we react in fear and confusion, and retreat from consideration of issues expressed with the conditioning word embedded in them.

What's really going on, I think, is that we've been conditioned to feel uncomfortable, frightened, and confused, and to think that, because we see people on one side lying, that people on all sides lie.

We're conditioned to think that you need fairness and balance when considering issues. Take global climate change – most earth and atmospheric and oceanic scientists agree that it's happening and that human activity is playing a major role. But there must be balance, so a ought and paid for crank has to be put up alongside the scientists to spout the oil industry's line.

Take the separation of church and state. It's a fundamental understanding in American government. It works if you like freedom of religion, which the founders did, and it works if you want to avoid religious wars, which the founders did. So of course we need fairness and balance, to offset our centuries of progress with rapid decline.

The danger of Sarah Palin isn't that she is dangerous. She is sea foam, chaff, smoke. She will blow away soon enough, but it won't help.

Sarah Palin is the lipstick on the pig of neoconservative government.

I've got to get back to work, so for what neoconservative government means, read 1984 and The Handmaid's Tale. Then take your kids out for a walk in the fresh air, or have a cup of coffee with an old friend. Get away from the computer and the television and the radio. Think where you want to be in a year, five years, ten years.

Who's going to help you get there? Don't be afraid anymore.

Let's close with one of the most important passages in political history, from the Declaration of Independence, 232 years ago:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Happiness. You can only pursue it when you are not afraid.