random thoughts

I just can't bring myself to read the rest of Levin's book (Liberty and Tyranny) at this point. It's rather like listening to Limp Bizkit in the elevator. It might be tolerable elsewhere but...

It's the economy, stupid
Watching the unemployment rate going up, up, up. Watching how my money stretches going down, down, down. The city was supposed to be working on the public housing exterior repairs. We still have holes in our exterior walls where the fences USED to be attached. Every year we have to explain to the (usually new) case worker doing inspections that if she looks she'll see that they are on ALL the units, and it isn't anything the residents have done. My doors have never fit right. My windows have finally been repaired (half assed) after over a year of requests. All of these things were put off until the exterior repairs. Now I hear funding is cut, and it's off the table completely.

Companies are closing left and right around here, and Albuquerque was thought to be pretty much recession-proof. Mostly it's the stores that are closing... some of the little furniture stores are gone, and a bunch of stores that were in plaza's with national chains that have gone under no longer have the benefit of being next door to a business which draws a crowd. Now it looks like our mall in the uptown area is going to close down, leaving the only major mall on the very edge of town in the northwest... on a street which already has severe congestion issues because of the mall and the local development.

The Secret
I was thinking the other day how much The American Dream and Conservative economic views are like The Secret. The whole idea of both is that if you're "good" you rise to the top. If you don't rise to the top, it's because you're "bad". Both blame victims for their situation. It's a way to reinforce the status quo, and celebrate the difference between the haves and the have nots.

According to The Secret, if you're right with the Universe, if you put your request to the Universe out right-mindedly, you will receive whatever you desire. It's another version of Visualization, where if you can keep your mind focused on the desired outcome, it will occur. It's magic

The American Dream is based on the idea that if you work hard you'll rise to the top financially. The flaw here is that it's another kind of magical thinking: that there is a place at the top for everyone who wants it. Of course, even conservatives know there isn't a place at the top for everyone, and they explain that away by stating that everyone doesn't want it. Of course, there are people who prefer poverty, who are too lazy to want to have meals on their table, who never want to better themselves. Most conservatives will even tell you who these people are: Hispanics, Blacks, and Atheists... people who have no real roots in Real America.

That the American Dream is not equally accessible is unimaginable to them. It MUST be that certain groups are "bad" and flawed. Not surprisingly, they tend to see financial successes among these demographics as signs of "Liberal interference" in the "natural order of things".

Secure footing?
I'd like to think that we're on more secure footing these days, and that the liberal control of the congressional and executive branches of government means that we will have less narrow minded reactionary legislation, but it seems part of the liberal mindset is to try to appease everyone, including the intolerant angry right. It's a rather naive position, because we know that the right doesn't try to appease the left when they're in power, and that balance is something that occurs over time, not in individual administrations.

Watching the WASP right respond to this administration, however, is frightening... not merely because they have the rage to seize power, but the level of open intolerance and theocratic politics with which they are whipping their followers into a frenzy over. While these individuals voiced their repulsion at the "mindless following" of a black man preaching hope, they don't find any problems with their own technique of gathering followers believing that God wants them to take back America for God.

I'm not sure today whether this is a normal fluctuation in the polarization of American politics, or if we're seeing something that's dangerous in it's extremism. The Republican party, after the 2008 mandate seems to be regrouping around a small, loud, and potentially dangerous contingency: Those who cannot and will not separate church from state, and who have no tolerance for political or religious beliefs other than their own. Does the Republican party now embrace a Puritan Theocracy?