Oh my God, what have we done? Everyone’s afraid what skeletons Dan Rather’s gonna find in our closet.

The famous American broadcaster, the one who more than anyone inherited the Walter Cronkite “journalist’s journalist” mantle when that era finally closed, came to Vancouver this week, and he brought a camera crew with him.

Booted from his anchor desk at CBS News a bit before he was done (over allegations he reported falsely on George Bush’s Vietnam War record), Rather is returning to his roots as an investigative reporter and has signed on with a cable channel to overturn some big rocks and catch sight of the creepy crawlers that might be scurrying away down there. He’s looking for a big spectacular rock to begin rebuilding his shattered reputation before he turns down the sheets on the big bed in the sky. He’s come to Vancouver with a real big sniff on.

Understandably, the local Mayberry Chamber of Commerce, in double-time rethink mode about all this talk of putting Vancouver on the map, is nervous. (No one has yet proposed how we go about getting ourselves off that map of the world, no doubt a much tougher thing.)

Where is Rather going? Who is he talking to? Why is he looking over there? It’s hard for the local boys sitting on the bench outside the general store, or down at the Vancouver Board of Trade, because as every kid knows, it’s looking nervous that gets you busted. Like the funny bumper sticker said, “Jesus is coming, act straight!”

Nervous? Who us? What do we have to be nervous about? Perhaps Rather would rather go see Davis Inlet, Scarborough, or Fort McMurray (lots and lots of drugs there, very gritty realism to catch on camera!)

Putting aside all value judgment and blame for the moment, what we have here is something actually quite fascinating. For whatever reason, and lord knows there are specific reasons and specific individuals to point the finger at, the downtown eastside has come into being. It is what it is, and unless we want to get real ugly with buses and cops and tazers, it’s not going away in time for the media frenzy that is the Olympics, just 27 months away.

Clearly, also, there are enough people here more than ready to show anyone who asks where to look, just in case the Mayberry bunch think this sin can be hidden from the world’s cameras. This newspaper itself is already finalizing the bus tour route and script for the driver: “And over on your left, folks, if you kindly look up this alley, is where the Indian was dumped to die of exposure. His photo is on page 23 in your media kit.”

What makes the Vancouver that we have today (as opposed to the Vancouver of history, the Vancouver of the imagination, or the Vancouver of the Tourist Board—all the same thing really) so fascinating is the unique way it embodies and expresses all that modern globalization and capitalism is. Neither of these things is particularly new. Globalization was far more a reality in 1929 than it is today, and was far more a reality in 1890 than it was in 1929.

And the big age of the capitalists is well behind us too, memorialized in the names Carnegie, Mellon, and Rockefeller, and anything Soros, Gates, and Buffet do today is strictly derivative, is not inventive in the least. So too has the London of Dickens, the Paris of Orwell, and the Bhopal of Union Carbide been already documented and embedded in our historical imaginations. We know, we know, we know: ever since Max Weber annunciated the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, capitalism’s dark side has laid exposed to all with the slightest inquiring bent of mind.

But capitalism is different today. Where once the cat-and-mouse game played between its practitioners and its critics was a matter of its critics exposing the hypocrisies and its practitioners covering them up with crafty philanthropies, today the practitioners are wholly inadequate and insecure posers living off the last residuals remaining from the Great Age and not even able to think up anything as clever as philanthropy. Meanwhile, the critics think they’re Nobel Prize material for finally figuring out (while high on a deniable joint, of course) what the phrase “beds are burning” means in that Midnight Oil song from 20-odd years ago. You want hypocrisy? How about any company that gives any donation to any political party running for election of a government the owners of the company viscerally hate the very existence of?

And globalization is different today too. Where once wolves were sent to herd the sheep in far lands, today we got the sheep herding the sheep. It was personal back then. The British Empire boasted of commanding one fifth of the planet’s land mass and made sure to plant the Union Jack through the carcasses of anyone proposing to stand in the way. Today, we let them fly their own freak flags, we let them elect their own scarf-headed deputies, and we let them sort their own little battles out (with our guns, of course).

It’s the Jim Crow laws of the old slavery-built south writ large: we let the local elites come into the tent and slurp up the feast so long as they do the dirty work back home and keep their own well away from the tent for us. Anyone in the world with a problem with globalization can take it up with their own pretend leaders. (Which is why 9/11 really is such a blow. Someone with the means threw a firecracker inside the tent, from the outside. Who with money would strike at the source of the largesse they themselves enjoy? Do we need to up the “yes massa” pay scale, American elites ask themselves, bewildered.)

Vancouver is historically the direct product of globalization like no other city on Earth, having as it does no purpose to exist were it not for globalization in the 1890s no less than globalization today, while it is also the product of late, mature capitalism where no vestige of the Great Age of capitalism can be found on account of the city not being here when that age happened. Where any self-important strutting young capitalist whistling down Wall Street or Bay Street need only look up to see the names engraved in granite arched over doorways to be reminded how small and petty his latest scheme really is, in Vancouver, the only names of prominence are those of earlier generations of small and petty schemers themselves, never grander in vision or smarter in craft than our own today, and so our own lack humility, and the grace and charm it brings.

Our local elite are still in the candy scramble mode. They still think homelessness is the personal fault of the homeless because after all they themselves went out and bought a home, didn’t they, or they’d be homeless too. Carnegie didn’t huck up that building at Hastings and Main for the poor and indigent. He put it up, and scratched his grand name across the top of it, so our own elites might have something to look up at and ponder as they pick their way through the poor and indigent gathered there on their way to lunch. Pearls before swine, Andrew, keep rolling in your grave.

Vancouver is fascinating because it is the face of the new capitalism and the new globalization. Nobody knows what to do with the Indians who, despite all our economic analysts crunching all the numbers and holding up proofs the jobless rate is down, still don’t seem to be working. Nobody knows what to do with the homeless who, despite more analysts and policy wonks producing more reports showing yet more metrics containing the best outlooks going forward, still don’t seem to be living in homes. Nobody knows what to do with the addicts who, despite plans and lobbies and groups and therapies and treatments, still don’t seem to be leaving the drugs alone.

Meanwhile, never was more money made by those making the money, never have more grander homes been built in this whole country’s history than right here and right now, and never have more drugs of every kind been more available, and helping more people, than right now: just pay a visit to a private assisted-care building restricted to the aging elite at meal time to witness the consumption rates today. It beats any back alley in the downtown eastside many times over.

The face of the new capitalism and the new globalization, as seen plain as day across the face of Vancouver, is one of utter confusion, denial, and daily prayer for absolution from responsibility. We don’t know what’s happening, we don’t know what to do, we don’t even know if we have problems, and we have no real leaders to tell us. The mayor says, hopefully, and with a grimace as though he’s having the world’s worst visit to the bathroom, that he’s pretty sure the same weird shit is happening in every city, not to worry, at least we’re not alone. The Vancouver Board of Trade dabs the sweat off their brow and cuffs the whirring computational machine up there on the stage with them at the magic show, and begs our patience and assures us it will soon spit out the answers we’re looking for. The local media clutches the reports that say we have the best city in the world so tight they tear them in two, so desperate are they for reassurance that everything isn’t about to go kabloo-ey. Like the tightly wound former beauty queen hiding an alcoholic and abusive husband, drug addicted kids, strings of maxed out credit cards and one sideways glance away from a total freak out and melt down, Vancouver is one nervous city. Dan Rather risks being shot showing up here, now, with his camera crew. Not now! the city screams in terror behind the shut curtains, too early! We’re still getting the party ready!

Unfortunately, there’s no help. We’re just at the front of this parade and the whole world is behind us thinking we’re the ones who must know where we’re all going, or else we wouldn’t be in front. But what nobody behind us can see yet is the wall we’re staring at in front of us. Yeah, we are the new capitalism and globalization, and yeah, we’re making a whole lot of money. Now what?