I have two friends, both compassionate, and for the most part rational people. Both work hard, they get by, they’re comfortable even; they spend their free time having fun with and taking care of their friends and family.

In my estimation, they’re good americans. They’re politically vocal and active, though it’s hard to tell to what extent. (Like most americans they don’t talk about their actions, it’s sort of like giving to charity, they do it, they encourage others to do it, but they don’t brag about how much they gave.) I know they vote, pay taxes, donate to campaign funds, sign petitions and encourage others to do the same. But like a cumbersome burden, they carry an undying sense of futility in their hearts. They are fundamentally mistrustful of their elected leaders, even the ones they themselves vote into office. Abiding within each of them is a deep urgency to save the world but a deeper sense of impudence to fight the threats they perceive around them.

They are ashamed for America because they think she is heading in a dangerous direction, one that goes against the founding principals, tears at the fabric of family and community which they perceive as the fundamental ideal of American virtue. But they are proud to be americans, because they live in a free country where any citizen can do as he or she pleases, express what she or he feels. Where if one works hard and plays by the rules one can be whatever their hearts and dreams can imagine.

But, because these opposing emotions (shame and pride, futility and hope) grow within them, they believe that the others’ feelings are a threat, that the others’ words and plans are nothing but a collection of lies, deceits, and false choices. They each have an unyielding faith that theirs’ are ideas of substance that, properly articulated, will connect with all American people.

So, although I love both my friends, I can see why they don’t love one another. What’s the fallacy in their thinking? It’s quite easy for me to recognize for I’m guilty of the same misconception. There is not and never has been an American people, we are always a part of a collection of americans who each have a different idea of what it means to be a citizen and how it should work out in policy and practice. We are all deeply involved in the same game of good enough, and somewhere deep down we need to realize that good enough is as good as it can get. But realization is a hard commodity to find these days.

The cause of our current discontent is easy to identify, every individual sees it and recognizes it. We all constantly complain about it. In a unified voice, it maybe the one thing we all have in common, we scream about our loss of Control. But Control, the very idea, is a child’s concept. In the domain of adults, the awareness of the fragility of life, the illusion of the power of our will to bend the world to our desires, and the very concept of permanency are recognized as illusions.

In our country, since it’s founding in the colonies, only an elite few have ever struggled with the real idea of what it means to control and they have always tried to wrest power from the masses and reign by decree. Their history is always the same, they are toppled; for dissatisfaction is the fabric of our cultural identity, and violent overthrow our beacon of change. Revolution was written into our founding documents. The Gentlemen landlords of that age didn’t agree with each other anymore than my friends agree on welfare or I agree with a conservative pundit on what it means to shout fire in a theater. They knew that there was no controlling this rabble that is the American experiment.

Like my friends, one little man always stands on his mole hill shouting about the American virtue of biblical morality, chastity, temperance and the divine providence of our continental claim. Then over on his tree stump another little man, who by the way looks a lot like the first, screeches eternally into the wind about the separation of the church from the state, rationalism, tolerance and the necessity of social welfare in an unkind world. The disagreeable bluster started on a boat somewhere in Europe before even the Narragansett or the Pequot knew what was coming.

So it is up to each of us to scream at each other, but not kill each other, to wrest power from each other without making of our land an abattoir. But most importantly and the fundamental beauty and reality of our people; we are to respect the life chosen by the Individual in his or her own conscience as a beacon of what it means to be free.

Bio: ChrisBunny! is an artist, performer and writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

The following numbers show the reality of compensation dollars (in billions) paid out by 9 banks who were recipients of T.A.R.P. funds. The numbers were compiled from the banks own public SEC filings which can be downloaded from their individual Investor Relations webpage’s. These numbers are the fairest publicly available data into the total employee compensation for these banks. To be fair, please keep in mind that these numbers also include non-compensation benefits such as healthcare.

Bank of America
Personnel Expense
2009 – $31.5
2008 – $18.4

Bank of New York Mellon
Staff Expense
2009 – $4.7
2008 – $5.2

Citigroup
Compensation & Benefits
2009 – $24.9
2008 – $31.1

Goldman Sachs
Compensation & Benefits Expense
2009 – $16.2
2008 – $10.9

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Compensation Expense
2009 – $26.9
2008 – $22.7

J.P. Morgan Investment Bank
Compensation Expense
2009 – $9.3
2008 – $7.7

Morgan Stanley
Compensation & Benefits Expense
2009 – $14.4
2008 – $11.1

State Street Corp.
Salaries & Employee Benefits
2009 – $3.0
2008 – $3.8

Wells Fargo & Co.
Salaries, Commission, Incentive Compensation & Employee Benefits Expenses
2009 – $26.5
2008 – $12.9

With all the media attention being paid to the multimillion dollar packages proffered to the elite masters of these institutions, the whole amount of salary expense, a much more disturbing dollar amount, was shielded from the public. We got our bad-guy untouchables in their otherworldly fog of private planes, gated communities, and political fundraisers while the story of real numbers was hidden in plain sight.

If we round up to the nearest 10th of a billion, which seems ridiculous but that’s how Wall Street views billions, that leaves us with total compensation at the end of 2009 at $157.9 billion for only 9 companies. At the end of 2008, the worst year for the economy since the tumult of the Great Depression, $123.3 billion in total compensation was paid out. $281,200,000,000 was paid to the employees of these 9 institutions during two of the worst years for average wage earners since WWII.

So now let’s consider the much dissected Bloomberg/Business Week interview with President Obama. Here is the quote that all the dogs are chewing on.

B&B.W. Journalist: Let’s talk bonuses for a minute. Lloyd Blankfein: $9 million. Jamie Dimon: $17 million. Now, those were in stock and less than what some had expected. But are those numbers O.K.?

President Obama: First of all, I know both those guys. They are very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system.

I do think that the compensation packages that we have seen over the last decade, at least, have not matched up always to performance. I think that shareholders oftentimes have not had any significant say in the pay structures for CEOs.

B&B.W. Journalist: Seventeen million is a lot for Main Street to stomach.

President Obama: Listen. $17 million is an extraordinary amount of money. Of course, there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I am shocked by that as well.

Interview was conducted by Bloomberg News White House Correspondent Julianna Goldman, Washington Bureau Chief Michael Tackett, Executive Editor Albert Hunt, and Bloomberg Business Week Editor Josh Tyrangiel. The whole thing can be found here.

The significance of this statement and what has been left out of the conversation again comes down to whole numbers. In the year 2009 the whole of MLB paid out $2,666,318,494.00, in Wall Street parlance that’s $2.7 billion dollars. That’s for all the players, in the whole league! Not just one. In 2008 it was also $2.7. And that’s what the malodorous stench that crinkles the nostrils of workers is, not what that One Guy made. And President Obama didn’t do himself any favors by trying to diminish the outrage by his acrobatic little metaphor.

MLB salary numbers come from USATODAY’s baseball salaries database which can be found here.

Bio: ChrisBunny! is an artist, performer and writer living in Brooklyn, New York.