People are looking for places to put their anger these days. I don’t know who is responsible for the above depicted action on our front lawn any more than I know who is responsible for skyrocketing the stock market toward the 9,000 stratosphere when unemployment is a runaway train. But people don’t really understand trains in America anymore – only cars, trucks, and vans. And how to bail things out.
I did the American Community Survey last night – with our residence “randomly” selected by the Census Bureau as one to represent the many. At times it didn’t feel so random; it felt random as a security screening at an airport with my long hair and my lack of a flag pin. At other times it felt less random because maybe everyone in America is filling on of these out. But I can be reassured that it was random because America rarely likes direct democracy or the true enfranchisement of everyone. We’re a republic – we like Electoral Colleges and Congressional Districts and ways of putting a thick layer of money-motivated corruption between ourselves and our political outcomes.
Maybe it wasn’t random because of our income, because we’re doing okay, because they have our tax return and maybe if they can only survey houses like ours, there won’t be any proof of a depression (see below comic).
I saw the movie “Milk” on Friday. It’s not quite in the rare air of the two Important Movies I mentioned last week, but I think it’s worth seeing. It’s about a lot of things, but perhaps mostly anger. Anger at being personally left out of the picture and the steps, through anger, that people take to reestablish themselves. And, ultimately, how all anger is personal and nothing hurts quite so much as the sting of losing one’s job.
Actually, an incredible amount of the movie, as I re-ponder again, is about the pain of losing employment. Heck, maybe it is an Important Movie after all.
I don’t know where all the people losing their jobs are going, but I don’t think they’re buying stocks. I don’t think they’re looking at the 401k or the IRA balance and thinking how they won’t need that money till they’re 65. I don’t think they’re looking for ways to make Christmas a bigger splash than the year before. A major city (like, top-fifty in the US) is losing their job every month. An entire major city. At an escalating rate.
The anger is coming.
And, obligatorily, because not all of my posts can be downers, here’s something to brighten your day. Also, because it’s the only thing keeping my job-related anger at simmer instead of boil.
Officially reported as “two people in the diamond”:
There’s no truth in Pravda, even online.
Shoot – that makes this a downer again, huh?
