Who said civilization is fair?
And then I think that even within this country there are enormous differences between people. We like to think in averages. The average size of a house today is 2300 sq.ft. (a generation ago it was half that), but that means there are some people who live in palaces, and millions who are homeless. Saw a statistic the other day, that the average income of a manager of a "hedge fund" (whatever that is) is 346 million dollars a year -- almost a million a day! One of them "earned" well over a billion in a year. Can that be? How can they spend even a portion of that?
We need a kick in the butt. Let's talk how global warming affects me. Or, more powerfully, how does it affect my business. How does it affect the price of food, the availability of water, worldwide crops? Because global warming is not our problem only, all life on the planet is in danger.
I know that some of the foods I buy have gone up at least 50% (now I grow more of my own). Because of fuel prices, they say. But somehow the higher prices we pay for almost everything are not counted in the formula that determines inflation.Maybe I do not understand what inflation is. More likely, I do not understand politics.
Our leader says that the economy is more urgent to worry about than global warming. "We have a war to fight."
I have not heard any popular reaction to those statements.
If we are indeed the richest, most powerful nation of the world, shouldn't we be the model of how to deal with global warming? And inequality? And injustice? And, and, and...
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Shouldn't we have been more prepared for Hurricane Katrina? There were warnings.
Shouldn't we have been more prepared for what we now call nine-eleven? There were warnings. There was maybe an hour between hijacking four planes and hitting the twin towers, then the Pentagon, and one was forced to crash. Not a fighter plane in the air anywhere near. And I have always wanted to have an expert explain to me how those buildings could collapse so perfectly, falling straight down into their own foundation. And then a third, smaller building, collapsing from the shock of seeing the other two implode? I have seen movies of buildings inside a city that were blasted on purpose--another, bigger and higher building had to be built there. I was always under the impression that it took specialists to know where to put the charges, and how to fire them one by one just so, so that the building implodes on itself.
Shouldn't we have been more prepared for the after effects of the air in the heart of New York, thick with debris and who knows what chemicals even days and weeks after 9-11, and thus prepared for medical consequences?
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Why are we in Iraq?
The Democratic (majority in) Congress could not stop the war by setting a date for withdrawal. Our leader was adamant that we cannot withdraw troops. Indeed, we need more troops, he insisted. For what? Victory. And what does victory mean? The end of terror everywhere, for always?
No, we don't ask why we should (still) be there. We won the war, we got rid of Saddam Hussein. A new Iraqi government was democratically elected, we handed over sovereignty (did we have it to hand over?) -- so why are we there?
Over the years we have heard a series of answers to why we are there. Lately we are told that the reason we are (still) there is to establish a democracy in the middle of this Muslim part of the world -- and this new government needs our help. They are a sovereign nation; did they ask us?
