2 Cents: An Obvious and Very Inconvenient Truth

As this morning's headlines proclaim, Barack Obama is (or will be) the Democratic Party's nominee for president.

This is cause for cheer. Regardless of what Obama "really" stands for, I sympathize with the notion that his very biology, background, and history are reasons to support him. He personifies the myth (myths are not necessarily bad, or even false) that anything is possible in America, and strengthens this country's claim as the world's first post-racial society. Plus, he seems like a decent guy.

That is all obvious. What may not be so obvious is that Obama will almost certainly do nothing about the festering rot at our core -- the growing gap between the (very few) rich and the (very many) poor. Despite the rhetoric -- and the progressive projections that people have foisted on him -- Obama is a typical 21st Century Democrat. Matt Gonzalez, the VP candidate on Ralph Nader's ticket, has written about this, and I commend all to read his piece.

The Great Stratagem of Wall Street, as I call it, has been its successful capture of both parties in our 2-party system. There are as many millionaire investment bankers, billionaire hedge fund pinheads, and $750,000-per-year corporate lawyers (I underestimate) who contribute to and identify with the Democrats as the Republicans. It is no accident, for instance, that Chelsea Clinton -- the Democratic first daughter who presumably had the opportunity to do whatever she wanted with her life after graduating from Stanford -- chose to work for a NYC hedge fund run by a big supporter of the Democratic Party.

The result of Wall Street's capture of both parties is, of course, that nothing changes regardless of which party controls the White House (or Congress or the Supreme Court). Yes, yes, the parties differ at the margins. But neither will do anything to disturb the status quo, one that has yielded wealth & comfort for the talented few, and degradation and insecurity for the not-so-capable many.

No one who ascribes to Rawls's notion of the veil of ignorance or "original position," for instance, would call this country just. The photograph above is my very obvious illustration, taken on Fifth Avenue during an early Sunday morning in March.

Three things to note in this obvious snapshot: "HW" is Harry Winston, the famed NYC jeweler; nothing more needs be said about the man on the sidewalk; and reflected in the window is a man in a silver car with NJ plates. I take the picture; you, the viewer, do the math.

Here's another from the same morning, just a few blocks east on Park Avenue:


This is not the super-rich Upper East Side stretch of Park Avenue, but the corporate headquarters stretch in the 50s. But, hey, what's the difference?

I don't go out of my way to take pictures of homeless people. They're just there. And in about the same numbers whether Republicans or Democrats are in charge.

We walk around them or pretend not to notice them. The very existence of such people, of course, undermines the notion that this is a just society. If Derrida has taught us anything, it's that margins matter. The margin defines the core.

I am complicit in this collective guilt. Indeed, I may be even more culpable: I took these photographs simply because, like Winogrand, I wanted to see what the scenes before me looked like when photographed. I liked the light, the colors, the arrangement of objects, and pressed the button, hoping that Photography's magic would be summoned. I just wanted to create an image that I would like to look at later. No social agenda whatsoever.

A few more. On a very cold late November afternoon in Bryant Park:


The pigeon and the man have a similar posture.

A September sunset on Canal Street:


The sign says "No sitting on steps." Well, he's not sitting.

High noon on Baxter Street, from last July (this one speaks for itself):


It's not a black thing or a white thing. Obama obviously understands this, at one level. But the cynic in me cannot but think that regardless of who wins in November, Wall Street wins again. Nader in '08? But what would be the point of that ...