Base an economy on smoke and mirrors, wild speculation in financial instruments no one but their makers understand, pretend real estate prices will always go up! Up! UP! and kick the regulators to the curb, and at some point in time real pain will be felt by real people. We are at that point now.

CINCINNATI (Reuters) – Auto salesman Ryan Thomas is watching the credit crisis hit Main Street America. On Monday, as Congress rejected a bailout plan and stock markets plummeted, Thomas had to turn away a customer with $3,000 in his hand who wanted to buy a new vehicle.

“He wanted to get into a bigger truck for his job, he was a union worker,” Thomas said. But the man still owed money on the vehicle he was trading in, so his loan request was denied.

“He didn’t have enough money down. He would have needed about $5,500 down and he had $3,000. A year ago that was a piece of cake,” Thomas said.

The customer left without his American-made vehicle, Thomas lost another sale — and somewhere an autoworker made one less truck, a tiny ripple in the growing U.S. financial crisis.

And it isn’t just car salesman losing out on commissions. Small businesses are seeing their lines of credit go Poof! too, as the credit crunch starts to wind its way down the food chain:

Dallas-area roofing contractor Bill Good has already felt the squeeze. Before times were tough, his bank offered him a $100,000 credit line that he didn’t need. Now, with high oil prices doubling the cost of roofing material, he’s strapped.

“Now I can’t access this kind of money to facilitate my cash flow. The lines of credit … have dried up,” said Good.

Kansas City cabinet maker Anthony Gallo is in a similar bind. Eighteen months ago Gallo had no debt. Now he’s being forced to borrow just to make payroll — just as his chief lender has cut his credit line from $400,000 to $175,000.

“My line of credit has been cut to nothing,” said Gallo. “We’re all hurting… and wondering what is going to happen.”

It may be too late to reverse this downward spiral. I don’t know. I have no crystal ball. But something tells me we haven’t hit anywhere close to bottom yet. Not in the markets, not in jobs lost, not in any measure of economic misery to which one can put a number nor to those which one cannot. Like trying to value the real worth of the elephant dung otherwise known as credit swaps and mortgage backed debt instruments that so many banks still list as assets on their balance sheets, there is no way to really assess the amount of harm we have done to our economy, and to the lives of our people. yet.

But we are about to find out. And God help us if McCain “wins” the election. Because he is not fit to command a toy boat in a bath tub. If we think we know how to define the meaning of the words “incompetence” and “reckless” after eight years of George W. Bush, we would soon discover that we don’t know Jack about either one should the keys to the White House magically appear in Johnny Mac’s hands come next January.

We are already teetering on the edge of a dictatorship, and my guess is that McCain would either assume that role himself, or pave the way for someone else, possibly in the military, possibly someone else from the ranks of our vast right wing crazy machine (think Dominionist Christians).

We avoided a fascist takeover and/or a military putsch during the 1930’s by the slimmest of margins. I don’t think we want to tempt fate like that again. But we may be about to find out. Our armed forces are far more central to American society, and possess far more influence than they ever did back in the days before WWII. They have been infiltrated at all levels by fundamentalist Christians, much like the armed forces of many Islamic countries such as Pakistan have been infiltrated by Jihadist elements of their societies. And religious zealots are not known for their respect for democratic institutions.

Such people believe that their God is the only power to whom they owe any loyalty or devotion. Certainly not to a mere piece of paper like the Constitution. And when God is your General, you will justify any action, and do anything necessary to accomplish his ultimate victory in the world. We see people on the right raving all the time about Sharia law as a nefarious and evil influence in Muslim countries. I just hope to hell we aren’t about to find out what a Christian Dominionist version of “Biblical Law” looks like within the next few years.