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I am greeted over breakfast with this heck-in-a-handbasket hand-wringing from the doom-and-gloom media:
Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.
Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.
The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country's sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance [Alan Fram and Eileen Putman, "Everything Seemingly Is Spinning out of Control," AP via Yahoo, 2008.06.22].
Fram and Putman get two awards this morning: Honorable Mention for Bad Headline Writing and a special Unruh Award for Denying Reality. The writers proceed to cite Senator Obama's promise of change and his supporters' belief in "his exhortation, 'Yes, we can'" as proof of a growing American sense of helplessness.
Are there problems in our fair country and county? Sure. Are we helpless and hopeless? Heck no! If I believed there was nothing we could do about petro-addiction, hyperconsumerism, plutocracy, and fundagelical nuttiness, I wouldn't be blogging. I'm not here to chronicle the collapse of Western civilization; I'm here to stop it. ¡Sí se puede!
"Yes we can" is a near perfect antidote to the rightwing neocon disease we had in the White House for eight years and congress for six years. Together they did almost nothing useful - the repub controlled congress barely met three days per week. To compound their disease, when they did something; it was usually exactly the wrong thing. There is only one thing worse than having no vision - it's having the wrong vision. Belatedly and predictably Americans finally agree and agree that the US in on the wrong course. We will change it. Yes we can.
ReplyDeleteThere is a lot of doom and gloom to feed on but right now. Significant problems, too many caused by people worrying about ME rather than a more balanced WE. The "ME Generation" has control of the reigns right now and have no problem using whatever it takes (ie government) to get what they want. That attitude may be a reason for the developing plutocracy you talk about which seems to really have developed in the last 20 years, some say in large part by Reagan policies. Rather than government there for people, it's there for business. Is it trickling down? John Hess
ReplyDeleteTrickling down? Heck, John, we're already soaked in it! :-)
ReplyDeleteSupply Side Economics, Trickle Down Theory, Entitlements for the Wealthy, Unnecessary Tax Subsidies, pork, maximize stock price any way you can. Call it what it is: greed. Definitely not the Republican party that believed in financial accountability, but a government for the interests of a few. John Hess
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