"Just as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib have eroded America's moral authority, so the Bush administration's fiscal housekeeping has eroded our economic authority."
Geez Louise! Can't I even leave America alone for even a few days without it forgetting to do the dishes and destroying the furniture while I'm gone? Must I do EVERYTHING? Guess what, America? You need to clean up the house! And I do mean the White House and the House of Representatives.
PS: My visit to Mexico has caused me to think a lot about money. My parents both put themselves through college during the Great Depression of 1929. My mother worked full-time as a waitress. My father lived on walnuts. All this constant lack of money had an effect on their psyches. And on mine too! All I ever think about is money -- when I'm not thinking about pie, that is. And injustice of course. But I digress.
In America, I never shop at the mall. But if it did, would that make me happy? No. But what DOES make people happy? Feeling that their lives have meant something. I'd give every peso I own to believe that my life is well-lived.
My father lived on walnuts in the Great Depression of 1929 -- and it scarred him and it scarred me. Will the Great Depression of 2008 arrive and scar me more? It all depends. It depends on what will give me a sense of my own lasting value. And if my sense of self only comes from what I can buy at the mall, if a Great Depression hits again, then I'm in BIG TROUBLE. And so is America.
Or to quote Clark and Stiglitz, "What is required is in some ways simple to describe: it amounts to ceasing our current behavior and doing exactly the opposite. It means not spending money that we don�t have, increasing taxes on the rich, reducing corporate welfare, strengthening the safety net for the less well off, and making greater investment in education, technology, and infrastructure."
And we also need to be figuring out ways to get a life. Why isn't the New York Times telling us how to do that instead of just telling us why we need to go to "war". It's NOT the peso, stupid, that should be controlling our lives.
It's funny but some of the happiest times I've ever spent have been in places with no running water or no cars or no electricity -- like Girl Scout camp when I was a kid or Mma Peter's home in a former Bantustan in South Africa or in Mexico or Berkeley Camp Tuolumne or even Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Heck, even Dick Cheney spends his most happy hours out in the woods! Although in his case he's just shooting lawyers....
Why?
Because I was doing something meaningful and trying to help make the world a better place.
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