Blowing Bubbles: An Intensely Personal Review

An intensely personal review of the article The Great American Bubble Machine by Matt Taibbi. It is not recommended bedtime reading.


He handed me the article at bedtime. "You should read this," he said. When he recommends things, I usually listen. He has impeccable taste in reading. The title sounds like fun, but I know it's not. Not fun at all. I read the first few paragraphs and have to stop. "I can't read this before bed," I tell him. "It will make me dream of horrid things." I don't like to go to bed angry.

We live in our own bubble. From the inside, we see the world through irridescent soap shine - scrubbed and pretty, all glossy-bright and warped by our happy walls. Inside we float, bouncing off each other, protected. There are other bubbles that people speak of, but they are not our own. Or so I like to imagine. He helps me maintain our bubble, keep it from glancing off blades of grass or clapping toddler hands. He knows how important it is to me. He knows it's for our monkeys who are too young to think of things like Wall Street or the housing market. Money, to them, is two dollars and fifty cents a week. Fifty cents to charity, two dollars of financial freedom to save or spend. This is all they know. This is what they should know. They should not know of other money just yet. The money that equals power, corruption, usury, division and inequity.

"He's the new Hunter Thompson," he tells me of the author. Big words coming from the man who spent our one and only trip to Las Vegas, tripping in the steps of Fear and Loathing. (Not literally tripping, like the late Mr. Thompson, just visiting.) Nerdy vacation habits aside, this man I love is educated in political science, history, the law. He's also educated in a different way - in the ways of small people with large hearts, the ways of a soul mate with odd notions, the ways of being Daddy and Husband and keeping the wolves at bay. He's the pragmatist to my idealist. He tells me things will be OK when I lather on about the State of Things. He tells me that These Things come and go. I trust him because my mind is full of other things than history. He tells me, "You should read this," and I do.

I do not like what I read. I do not want to finish. It's too much to think about, too much to contradict. It makes me think of things like Goldman Sachs. Last week I didn't think of such things. I laugh and say it's a good thing we have no assets and then I worry about my mom, her entire retirement tied up in investments she doesn't fully understand. I don't understand how the large, imaginary money works. Technically, I do. I'm pretty smart that way. But in the center of me, I don't understand. I don't understand how there are people who not only cannot say "I have enough. I am content." but also seem content to take from those who have very little to begin with. I do not understand this and it makes me want to hug my kids, to hope their world continues to be two dollars and fifty cents every Sunday or some variation thereof.

There are so many things I read, I know. There are so many things I wish I didn't. I cannot fix those things. I cannot even begin to see clearly to the end of the problems. It cannot be solved with a swift kick in the shins, which is what I want to do. I laugh when I think of getting my common mud from my worn out boots on the perfect crease of a $2000 suit. But I cannot kick their shins, for my monkeys' sake. I can only keep my own bubble and make it work the best I can. I like to feel invisible, like no one can touch us. I like to feel aloft, afloat, swaying in the breezes that change.

Defeated at dinner last night, like I have not seen him about Such Things before, he tells me he's used up all his outrage for the day on the latest corporate bail-out. "A 'settlement' not a bailout! They're saying this!" He rages, "It is criminal, but it's not. It should be." The Hooligan expounds on broccoli and the jBird mimics her hero's fuming without knowing what it is she speaks of but maybe she does know: "Why can't people just share?" We do not usually talk like this in front of the kids. The fumes take up too much space inside our bubble. I raise my eyebrows at him and tell my jBird not to worry. He sighs, "I think it's come to the point where they're just looting the carcass."  These words from him chill and make my dinner suddenly unpalatable. This defeat, this portent of a world left picked clean by pillagers, leaving what? behind for the future that picks at its broccoli at my table.

These are the things I think about today, but they are out of my control. So we blow our bubble a little bigger: I bake bread with my son, I bring a surprise lunch to my daughter at school, I pound out these words, I play kickball, I go to the zoo, I blow those darker bubbles away from me - my quiet acts of peaceful rebellion. Today I cannot care about housing markets or tech stocks or golden parachutes. I am too busy investing in futures.