When Worlds Collide

When it's wrong yet accepted, when it's backwards yet adopted, when it's upside down yet embraced, when it's destructive yet passed and signed into law, andonandon, it is sanity saving to find ways to cope. Lacking the escape velocity required to rise above, actual thinking people most often turn to alcohol. This can lead to inventiveness. In McGuyver-esque adaptations of their available resources, they concoct and adopt creative finagles, kludges and shortcuts in hope of reconciling what they know and believe with what they see and hear.

What is an otherwise sane peon to do? The snot emitting from the blowholes of state, the blowholes of punditry, corporate blowholes and even the blowholes of the free-press is thick, fetid and copious. Where else would one look to find affirming avenues of productive engagement where things can make sense in the face of such nonsense? It's clearly not under the party politics rock. If you are truly blessed, your local politics can have restorative properties, but given the monkey see/monkey do nature of politics and policy, that too is becoming a rarer commodity.

Does anyone feign surprise anymore that the partnership between teh people and politicians has been usurped by money and the trappings of power. It has actually blurred and transcended the widely held concepts of nitty-gritty party politics to become an entity unto itself. Free agency in the "US" camp has been brutal. Making "Them" the perennial powerhouse. We biennially send one of our eagle eyed scouts to das capital to be wined and dined, ego-stroked and cajoled. They join the club, go to the mixers and are deliberately overserved. The problems back home seem a world away because they are.

New metrics are required to describe what's going on today. Being asked to pick a side? Why?
By November, the fundamental change that so invigorated and energized Obama's campaign will be reduced to accepting that having a Dem will be good enough for now. We'll hear the tired old "the problems didn't happen overnight, it's gonna take time, be patient, go shopping." Unfortunately, there will likely be nobody there to respond, "Hey, we're bleeding arterially! Unless you stop the bleeding, time won't matter!"

Well, isn't that just like "us"? ME ME ME all the time. Demanding proof of life. Fighting the hook forced down our throats. Show us. Tell US! What is to have value in this brave new world? After the takings, disinvestments, lootings, transfers and privatizations; what then?

When the goalposts have been moved so far that there is no longer a field? When the cupboard of scapegoats is bare? WHAT THEN? Remember when we were told that the housing crunch was a minor thing, caused by people who couldn't/shouldn't have been given loans? That the answer was to pour more money into the lender's coffers so they could offset their bad loans with new improved good ones? That everything that's gone so horribly wrong has been OUR fault?

To take just an obnoxious, obvious example, look at the United Auto Workers. If you buy what "they" say, the UAW had nothing to do with the success of the Big Three. In fact, we're told, the opposite is true. The workers are responsible for the Big Three's woes. Disinvestment, executive excesses, mismanagement and poor design had no part? The Union line is to protect their hard won perks and bennies and for a short time, workers were able to suspend disbelief and think "their" referred to the workers. They were able to watch as their mouthpieces piled out of the LIMO into the negotiating session, emerged with the wonderful news that SOME jobs were saved. At least enough to keep the Union solvent. This time. All it took was some creative editing. Both sides then piled back into their limos and hied to the club to celebrate this grand victory for the Amurcan worker.

To quote larue: "We're phooked."
Make mine a double.