The Federal Reserve does, though. And according to the Fed, there’s $575 billion in revolving consumer debt out there somewhere. Credit counseling centers are booming — one expects to generate $3 million in revenue in only its second year. Bankruptcy filings (96.9 percent of which are by consumers) have set records each of the last three years. Who are we trying to kid with this Puritan outrage when one of us breaks the code of financial silence?

Americans love to spend money, and that’s all there is to it. Shopping, not baseball, is the real American pastime. Go visit a relative and they just have to show you “our” mall, like it’s a natural wonder. Go abroad, you’ll always be able to tell the American tourists at a glance: They’ll be the ones who, when visiting a cultural landmark, head for the gift shop before viewing the landmark itself. Business, of course, is more than happy to accommodate us. Credit card issuers mailed out 2.3 billion card offers in 1997, and are raking in the bucks Bill Gates-style. Visa alone saw a 3.4 percent increase in the number of cards issued in 1998, inflating its credit volume by nearly 10 percent. Overall, revolving debt increased by 12.2 percent last year, with the average debtor owing $7,000 to $8,000. The interest on that debt, my friends, is only the beginning of the road to debtor’s hell. Credit card companies keep inventing new and improved ways to separate us from our dollars — and we go for them every time.

“The good news for consumers is the increased price competition, which has driven down rates across the industry,” says Stephen Brobeck of the Consumer Federation of America. Until a few years ago, the typical credit card interest rate was about 18 percent. Now, however, those 6,000 competing credit card issuers have brought about such bargains as introductory (“teaser”) rates as low as 3.9 percent, grace periods, cash rebates, free gasoline, frequent flier miles and charity donation matching. “These new low rates have drastically lowered the credit card companies’ profitability, so they make it up elsewhere,” says Brobeck. How? “By moving people as quickly as possible into the penalty categories.”

MBNA, for instance, collected $841 million in “non-interest revenue,” much of it penalty fees and other dings on consumers, in 1998 — a 20 percent increase over 1997. Another company reported a gain of 120 percent. Grace periods have shortened from 25-30 days to 20-25. (Check your fine print: Payment must not only reach the creditor by a certain date, but by a certain time on that date.) The current average late fee increased 56 percent in the last two years, to $22.10. Over your limit (even if the charge is approved)? The current average fee for that is $21.14, an increase of 52 percent; 10 years ago, that category didn’t even exist. Convenience checks, too, often carry “stealth” fees (not to mention that they are treated as cash advances and accrue interest at the highest possible rate, with no grace period).

The minimum payment is calculated on only 2 percent of the outstanding balance; it used to be 4 percent. Make just the minimum payment, and you’ll have a relationship for life. And the low teaser rate that suckered you in in the first place usually expires within five to nine months; even before that, though, being late just once can jack the rate up as much as 20 percentage points. Twice? Forget about it.

Twenty million credit card accounts were bought and sold between companies last year; if yours was one of them, you know that the acquiring company can just wave the magic calculator and jack your interest rate up like a Hollywood hemline. On second thought, you probably don’t know you’ve been jacked, because all they have to do is send you one of those gobbledygook, fine-print legalese notices none of us ever bothers to read. Another moneymaker for our creditors is to make deals with telemarketers, supplying them with portions of our credit files so they can solicit us for more useless things. The telemarketers then call in the middle of dinner and tell us about their “free, no risk” trial membership in a ridiculous new way to take our money — it started with dining clubs and travel clubs — and the pair of sneakers or free 35 mm camera en route to us today (“That’s right! Today!”) just for giving them a try. You accept the “free” membership thinking that because you never gave out your credit card number, you haven’t bought anything yet. Anyway, you’ll get a bill.

You are wrong. Next month, you notice a $59.95 charge on one of your 12 Visas and wonder what the hell the “Outdoor Explorers and Needleworkers Club” is and why they have your dough. They have your dough because your helpful credit card company fills in the blanks for them. At this point, you can probably get a refund, but it won’t be easy. The average debtor often doesn’t notice the “trial” membership until it’s too late. Possibly this is because the average debtor is getting younger and younger.

The credit card companies actually target college kids. You know, those people engaged in an activity primarily intended to equip them to make a living — later — and, uh, pay their bills. Future bills. College kids, by and large, have the kind of jobs that require hairnets and ought to be paying for beer, condoms and marijuana-laced trips to foreign countries that they will only hazily recall afterwards. Increasingly, many are having to work to be able to afford to go to college at all. To the untrained eye, they would appear to have little to offer a sane credit lender. Except, of course, for parents likely to bail them out. They’re not even considered high risks (only those under 18 need parental consent or a cosigner; often parents first learn of junior’s credit card when those nasty “give us our money” phone calls start coming). Bombarded with card offers from the first day of freshman year, the number of full-time students with cards in their own names rose from 58 percent in 1996 to 63 percent last year. Many pay in full each month, but more and more make only the minimum payments, with which it can take consumers between five years and a full millennium — depending on the hysteria factor of whoever’s doing the calculating — to pay off a $500 debt. Suffice it to say that the minimum payment is for suckers.

A University of Minnesota study showed that two-thirds of students being treated for depression had more than $1,000 in credit card debt. As debt increased, grade-point averages plunged. And students with high balances worked more hours and dropped more classes. Duh. If you want a surprise, though, here’s one: Professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard Law School projects that 150,000 people younger than 25 will declare personal bankruptcy in 1999. No wonder people in their 20s think reality bites.

In 1998, 160 four-year schools barred card marketers from their property. Other schools have merely raised the price of access, while some that allow marketers access restrict their movements and tactics. In acknowledging that costs and other barriers have risen in targeting the college crowd, Ed Stanley, president of a firm that markets credit cards to students, told the American Banker, “We simply have to be more creative.” Did anybody else’s skin just crawl?

And while it’s working harder to hook you, the credit industry is also trying to make it harder for you to slip the hook and get relief from your debts. HR833, the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1999 (and its Senate counterpart, SB625), are percolating through Congress, determined to make it more difficult for debtors to discharge debt through Chapter 7 “fresh start” bankruptcy. The bill would cattle-prod them straight to Chapter 13, which requires court-overseen debt prioritization and repayment. Given all the “personal responsibility” and “bankruptcy abuse” rhetoric zinging around Capitol Hill, the insolvent can only thank God that bankruptcy is a constitutionally protected right. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, calls it “financial crack” — a “consumer lending industry [that] actively solicits unsuspecting consumers through the mail with terms of easy credit [and] buy-now-pay-later jargon. And then after addicting debtors, lenders are advocating for [bankruptcy] reform. Of course, debtors are responsible for financial obligations that they incur; however, lenders must assume responsibility for their actions in creating [this] precarious financial crisis.” A similar reform attempt died in the Senate last year, but that battle is far from over.

Of course the credit card companies are trying to make consumer bankruptcy more difficult even as they make more and more irresponsible loans (their debt loss rate — debts that must be written off — is at least 2 percent higher than in the 1970s). You can’t blame them, though. We just make it easy for them. Ninety-six percent of consumers pay their bills on time; only 1 percent end up in bankruptcy. Those who do usually have staggering medical bills, a recent divorce or bouts of unemployment: They have an excuse. But the rest of us just shop and shop and shop. Make the minimum payment. Shop some more.

Legend has it that David Talbot financed Salon partially with credit cards. I financed my writing career that way. Fledgling directors have gambled everything to bankroll their movies with this insidious plastic. What are you mortgaging your future for? Like Vince Passaro told Salon in his own defense earlier this year: “There’s a big problem out there, and not just with the Passaros.”

Regardless of what SAT prep guides say about the derivation of the archaic word, to many Americans, “niggardly” quacks like a duck. Keith Watters, an attorney, told the New York Times, “Do we really know where the Norwegians got the [14th century] word?” You can roll your eyes at that — and I admit, I did — or you can accept the depth and severity of black hatred of the N-word. For the last several days I made a point of discussing the “niggardly” controversy with black Washington residents every chance I got. And repeatedly, in response to my unscientific street corner surveys, they were bothered by Howard’s use of the word. They dismissed the notion that he had no idea it might offend. They differed on what the response should have been, but not on whether the word was loaded. Howard, a new minority in a majority-black world, just learned the hard way the bilingualism of blacks like me, who operate in a majority-white world. Even I was surprised by the depth and unanimity of black concern about Howard’s unfortunate word choice — but I shouldn’t have been.

It is a staple of black stand-up comedy that whites long to use the N-word and will go to great lengths to find an excuse to do so. As one resident put it, “Do you really think [Howard] didn’t notice he had to pass ‘nigger’ before he could get to the ‘dly’?” Others pointed out that you needn’t be a Klansman to get a kick out of using the N-word, especially if you thought you had cover. (Salon’s own James Poniewozik noted this week how gleefully racists and black critics have used the word “niggardly” since the scandal broke.) It is interesting that conservatives, the champions of a “return to civility,” scoff at the notion that whites can avoid useless conflict by simply being careful with their language. But make a comment that can be construed, however torturously, to be anti-religious — well, you might as well change your name to Torquemada. A co-worker once tried to have me reprimanded for putting up a sign publicizing the office “Xmas” party. Hellion that I was, I was trying to take the Christ out of Christmas and thereby interfering with his free exercise of religion. Would those now scoffing at Howard’s black critics have scoffed at him? (I thought he was full of it, but I have taken care since to spell out the word. Why offend?) I have a friend who bridles at being referred to as a “fundamentalist”; he prefers “evangelical.” I do what I can to make him happy.

Having said all that, however, the fact remains that I think Williams failed his first test as D.C.’s much needed new mayor, after these long years of Marion Barry. He should never have accepted Howard’s honorable resignation. He should have acknowledged the incident for the legitimate controversy that it was (maybe not to me or you, but to lots of other folks) and ended it with a gentle reminder to Howard that language matters and a firm “that’s enough” to his attackers. Instead, Williams buckled. Quickly. But his was not the only failure. Too many D.C. blacks are still too willing to act like petulant children, holding their breath till they turn blue over a broken toy — and then be mollified by an extra scoop of high-fat, high-cholesterol ice cream instead of dinner. They prefer symbolic skirmishes with white America, and white racism, to the hard work of radically overhauling this troubled city, the stronghold of black America.

Mayor Williams was supposed to change all that. His victory was supposed to shovel dirt on the coffin of everything Barry; it was supposed to convert all those who thought it was better to have a mayor who ticked whites off than to have one focused on making D.C. the chocolate-covered diamond it should be. Williams’ election was supposed to mean no more flamboyance over substance. No more crudity masquerading as defiance. No more weakness and failure dressed up as authenticity. Williams was supposed to lead, not pander to the lowest level of political maturity. He was supposed to end the self-hating habit of seeing just how bad things could get in D.C., so blacks (up to their knees in unplowed snow or stomach-cramped from non-potable water) could nyah-nyah their white congressional overlords. I’m reminded of a favorite joke of my father’s from my 1960s childhood that exemplifies this zero-sum attitude perfectly: A white man flicks a huge cockroach off a black man’s jacket. The black man sneers at him and says, “Y’all just don’t want us to have nothing, do you?”

This debacle shows us that too many D.C. blacks are more concerned with making a mayor dance to their tune than in bettering their tumbledown home. They complain Ken Starr is wasting precious time and money on Monicagate, but treat this like the Dred Scott case. Blacks need to toughen up and forego easy targets like this for the tougher task of getting to the bottom of why we’re disproportionately poor, jailed, underachieving and sloppily educated — and it’s not because we’re bell-curved for failure or don’t try hard enough. Those who wax heartbroken over the condition of the many black D.C. residents who are poor, underserved and marginalized are the same ones demanding that the mayor spend his limited time trying to mind-meld with his white workers and ferret out their Inner Racist. They’re the kind of brainiacs who spend $25 winning a 75-cent kewpie doll at the carnival and think they’ve beaten the house.

As chief financial officer last year, Williams had the vertebrae to fire 165 black city workers (there are few of any other kind here) left over from Barry’s bloated bureaucracy. It was a shocking act and a sobering one — district government is the backbone of local black employment. It was that act that sold me on Williams. I sincerely feel for those fired workers, but there’s no way to fix the district’s ills without making the hard choices — something Barry refused to do. Something Williams promised to do.

That political courage was the source of the complaints that Williams “isn’t black enough,” more than his Poindexter image and ever-present bow tie (nobody questions Louis Farrakhan’s blackness, bow tie or not). By all means, let’s dispense with this one quickly. Once again, I invoke my father. Mayor Williams: If you argue with a fool, what does that make you? Don’t dignify the question with an answer. The blacks who should be in reeducation camps are the ones who think it’s the lack of bow ties, Ivy League education, mainstream diction and demonstrated competence that constitute “true” blackness. If whites tried to impose such limits on us, we’d be marching around the clock, singing “We Shall Overcome” till we were hoarse. When will we put this crap away and stop doing the oppressor’s job for him? This self-limiting obsession with what makes someone “black enough” is truly the last plantation and we need to emancipate ourselves from it. The only way for Williams to survive this question — which, like blackmail, never goes away if you once give in — is to ignore it.

Mayor Williams, you are the company you keep. Ignore the gloom-and-doomers and do your job for the good of the entire district. Your self-image is your own and I leave you to it. Howard is making it easy for you: He’s accepted your offer to rejoin district government and isn’t demanding the apology he deserves. You are hereby granted a “do-over” — or a mulligan, as the white boys say when golfing.

And remember, the bullies will take your lunch money every day if you let them. Don’t be a Barry. Just say no.

From 1980 to 1992, I was on active duty in the United States Air Force. My last overseas assignment was as chief of intelligence for Ankara Air Station, Turkey, a NATO-affiliated base. I got there in June 1989. When I left in late 1990, we were at war with our wacky neighbor to the south, Iraq. I rotated back to the world, and the Pentagon, and remained involved in the war effort till its conclusion. The war affected me in ways that I would never have predicted and have yet to effectively communicate to civilians and the unreconstructed liberals who expect me to be conflicted over my involvement.

I’m not. In fact, I tried hard to be even more directly involved. I volunteered to go to Saudi Arabia (in unsentimental G.I.-speak, “the Sandbox”), from which our troops were staging. I saluted smartly when I was deemed crucial and had to remain on active duty an extra year through the war’s aftermath. Indeed, I sought out every opportunity to be heard on operational matters (read: I put my two cents in every chance I got on exactly how I thought the destruction of the enemy should proceed). My only regret is that I wasn’t allowed hands-on participation or a more direct role in the decision-making that put “bombs on target.”

I’m not bloodthirsty. I can’t watch horror movies, people yelling at each other or a hypodermic needle piercing flesh. You cry, I cry. You puke, I puke. I’ll walk away from a fight so fast you’d get dizzy. I only enlisted in the first place to get out of my neighborhood. No one was more shocked than I when I turned into Xena: Warrior Princess at the Gulf War’s commencement. But I think I’ve figured out why I responded the way I did and why I wanted to get to the war zone.

Here’s the reason that will disgust you: I was professionally curious to see if all the things we’d been simulating for so long would actually work. It’s not as if, for instance, we could nonchalantly jam, say, Ecuador’s communications one morning just to see if we were doing it right. Now, here was our chance. How much could we destroy with how little? You never know when you might run low on weapons, and a good officer plans ahead. How many could we really kill if we dropped this kind of bomb as opposed to that kind? Oh wait — a few are getting away. Let’s chase them down with something low and slow and see if we can’t pick them off. Got em! Good job. Let’s see what kinda damage those F-16s can really do when our pilots aren’t just “shooting” gun cameras, photo op’ing what they would have destroyed had they not been shooting wussy blanks. Now we could blow those suckers up and see how good we’d gotten at body counting since ‘Nam.

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After a decade of scurrying into chem gear while inspectors held stopwatches, after an entire career spent simulating enemy attacks by wearing signs that said, “Left foot blown off” or “HQ building destroyed,” finally, we could put our skills to the test. Surgeons get to operate on real people with real appendicitis. Firemen get to battle real blazes and save real people from danger. But G.I.s with operational specialties rarely get to employ their skills. So, yes, we took professional pride in our work. We certainly didn’t exult in the carnage (had anyone, he or she would have been sternly reprimanded and shunned). But neither were we squeamish about it. The duly elected commander in chief said, “Jump!” and we said, “How high, sir?” (I wouldn’t dare speak for those directly engaged in battle. I’ll never know how it feels to actually kill someone or to blow up a building with humans in it. I’m only speaking as one who helped direct the war effort generally.)

Here’s the more understandable, forgivable reason for my militancy: guilt. Ten days after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, I had a team of 10 in place in Saudi Arabia, quartered in the same barracks that would later be blown up (none of my people were hurt). I’d gone to Turkey from Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio: The team was drawn from the same people I’d just spent three years working and partying with. The team Leader, Capt. Annie Ganzy, had an infant less than 6 months old as well as a civilian husband and other children. We were girlfriends. For some reason, she came to symbolize all of them for me. I supposed that had I not known them, I wouldn’t have been so emotionally involved, but I did know them and I couldn’t sleep at night for fear that they’d be killed or disabled.

Not one of them complained about having been sent. Indeed, nearly everyone had volunteered and basically begrudged the team their places of honor in the war zone. Since they were there working for my programs, I was responsible for them. There was a level of command between us, but my being above them in that chain meant the buck stopped with me. In my whole life I never experienced such a sobering slap in the face of responsibility. What if they died? What if they were taken prisoner? What if the women were raped by enemy soldiers? What about torture? What if I made a mistake? What if they died? What if I made a mistake? What if they died?

It tormented me. It was me their families should hold accountable. Me who should have to put on my dress uniform and take the long walk up 10 driveways to inform families that their son, daughter, mother, father would never come home again. I was bedeviled in a way that I pray never to be again in my life. The only thing I could think to do was to volunteer to go myself, so that’s what I did. I didn’t think I should send them there without being willing to go myself. I was scared shitless the Air Force would actually send me to the war, but at least, finally, I was able to sleep again. I was able to live with the responsibility.

That sense of responsibility, of my duty to my team, was never far from my mind. It kept me, it kept all of us, focused to a pinpoint on the war effort. I never stood a chance of getting to the war zone because nearly everyone volunteered, I was told. (Besides, it just doesn’t work that way. I know, I know, Maj. Houlihan was always putting in for those transfers on “M*A*S*H,” then withdrawing them at the last minute when Hawkeye apologized, but that’s just TV.) I had to try, though. There was too much at stake.

We G.I.s certainly knew that was a war about cheap oil — rhetoric about the poor, invaded Kuwaitis notwithstanding — but the fact remains that, for whatever reasons of geopolitical hegemony and petroleum reserves, Iraq was shooting at America. America is where my Mama lives. America is where all my stuff is. Iraq is going down. If Monaco shoots at us, for whatever reason, Monaco is going down. It’s that simple. And also, I had lots of friends both in the air and on the ground over there and it truly, truly pissed me off that somebody was trying to hurt folks I’d been drinking, flirting and shopping with. In my heart of hearts, I knew that if you want a job done right, you have to do it yourself: I wanted to help keep my team, my friends and all those anonymous captains just like me alive and in one piece. To do that, I needed to be in the game. For me, the Gulf War was about people, not politics. Saving my friends meant killing as many Iraqis and visiting as much well-chosen destruction upon them as possible so that they A) surrendered post haste and B) never pulled that shit again. I left it to President Bush to pretty up the details.

Of course, Saddam is a special kind of crazy, so B) will never happen until he’s in his solid gold mausoleum, but until then, I trust our G.I.s to kick ass, take names and make no apologies. Would I have been so unconflicted about Vietnam, Nicaragua or our Cold War activities in Africa? Probably not. As a matter of fact, during our Central America escapades in the 1980s, I steadfastly refused to volunteer for duties I suspected would send me on my way to Nicaragua; I thought our policies there disgusting. But I never kidded myself that I could be in the United States military and somehow morally opt out of a connection, however indirect, to that Central America policy. In for a penny, in for a pound. And make no mistake — had I ended up with orders for Central America somehow, I would either have gone and given it 110 percent or resigned my commission.

An apolitical, civilian-controlled military is the difference between us and the strongman juntas of South America and Africa. There’s a reason why we don’t have military coups here — G.I.s like me who kill who, when, how and for only as long as we’re told by the duly elected civilians to whom we remain firmly subservient at all times. If you don’t like what the duly elected civilians sent us off to do, throw the bums out next election. But you can’t simultaneously send us off to wage war and expect us to hate ourselves for it (we tried that once, remember?). Nor can you expect us to be half-assed about it — we’d have gotten ourselves and our buddies killed. What’s worse, we’d have let America be defeated. We didn’t enjoy the destruction, but we most definitely enjoyed the winning. We’re only human.