Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Explanations? We Don' Need No Steenkin'... -OR- Not OF This World

Does anyone really want/need an explanation for the cascading, less-than-optimal outcomes befalling mankind? After all we are boldly going where no man has gone before, right? Allocation of limited resources, acquisition of precious commodities and systematic dealing with refuse and waste is required for efficiencies. With that -naturally- comes danger, mistakes, catastrophe, calamity and isolated acute discomforts.

As long as the debris isn't falling on you? If your daily grazing is not disturbed or disrupted, there's no problem, right? If you've monetized the "opportunities" presented by the churn and chaos, stability would be really bad for business.
This is today's world. It's not raining where you are? The juggernaut's not flattening your immediate vicinity? Everything's cool. You can safely dismiss the alarmists. They must be crying wolf, right?

Sure, the oil spill in the gulf is the result of short-changing safety for the sake of profit, but there's nothing we can do about that now is there? The oil has to flow. These are all just trade-offs anyway, and you certainly wouldn't want to sacrifice your own comfort and convenience for the benefit of long-term viability or least of all to ease the suffering that your comfort and convenience visits upon people in proximity to the remote industries of your existence.

You gave to the relief efforts. You'll give more the next time they put on a star-studded telethon, (which btw, is an industry unto itself)so what the hell am I bitching about? What's all this nonsense? Somebody, somewhere is sitting down to write a fittingly uplifting ditty, to be sung by a star-studded choir that will unite the world and kiss the boo-boo and make it all better.

This is where I stumble. I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you. I I might as well be speaking some pan-galactic Esperanto. The failure begins because what NEEDS to be done is never on the table. EVER. Because what needs to be done would be inconvenient to some and those some have the means to be in control. It would be fair and smart and in our long-term best interests, but can never be considered. It cannot even be discussed. At least not seriously discussed or considered. You've downsized your life, adjusted your lifestyle, lowered your expectations. You've been doing that for decades. Our growth industry is suffering. Literally. That's where the money is. That's where the upwardly mobile "entrepreneurs" are hanging out, and cashing in.

Further, farther, faster is the whole point of the exercise? Where are we going?
What are we to do when we get there? In case you haven't noticed, we don't have a clue. Most of us can't see our way past the workday/week/month or the next URL we visit.

The best minds of our planet are taking care of business, right?

Getting through 40+ years of Silly String would be a slog even without the shills and deliberate booby-traps. The futility of the leak is an apt metaphor for the "irrational exuberance" and cascading failures that are the predictable bi-products of Reaganomics. When St. Ronnie put the pedal to the metal and removed the brakes and safeties it became a runaway rocket screaming off-course. You do the math.

Obama's challenge is to hold things together long enough to bring things back to earth. The task has been and will continue to be to keep the responsible parties within reach until sanity can take firm hold.

At the moment, we're in the same boat as Bernie Madoff's victims. Our chances of being "restored" are negligible. Obama's success has been in minimizing compounding our challenges and reining in the blatantly stupid idea that we can keep it going if we just pretend it's all good.

Straight out of the PNAC playbook, we have re-militarized America; fighting a never-ending war against a never identified, ever-evolving "enemy". We've been bullied into believing in external threats for which no sacrifice is too great, for which all of our resources must be available.

So forgive me if I sputter. Just ignore it. That's what we're best at.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What you say has lots of intensity, but you don't ever say what you're talking about. What is never on the table? Which side are you taking, if any? What are you railing against (or for)?
Steven Wayne Lytle

Rehctaw said...

These are general observations which lend to many of our present difficulties. Plug in your any difficulty and see where it takes you. It's typically in gain-saying circles that are inescapable owing to the elimination of something basic. There are obvious examples daily.

Frex, If you suggest that basic universal non-profit health care is the only cost-effective means to address significant populations, the concept is dismissed out of hand or runs away trying to define BASIC.

OR

If you want to talk about Iraq or Afghanistan, you can't alter the "given" that we are locked into providing troops, materials and monetary support UNTIL it's (pick one) fixed, done, stable, functioning without any idea what any of those might look like.

BPs ecological clusterfuck in the Gulf of Mexico occurred because it was easier to drill deeper and discount the potential risks than deal with the "inconvenience" of the myth of cheap oil.

Values and worth are upside down when planet threatening risks are deemed inconsequential.

This is how our world presently operates. It's prevalence doesn't make it right.