Welcome back to the malaise
Published 03-04-21
Rising prices, cancelled pipelines and more taxes.
Welcome back to normal, back into the shadows for the middle and working class where the squeeze of big government, big business and big lobbyists rule more and more of our lives.
Shouldn’t be too hard to get used to... it’s the same path of decline we’ve travelled on since the postmodernists got the keys to the car.
Though the last few months sure seems like there was a sharp increase in the speed to reach the bottom, as it were.
I’m sure there are many in our country who are relieved that a “steady hand” is at the wheel of it all, never mind the confusion he might have from time to time. The White House is big, and the schedule is, well, they supposedly keep him busy.
Normal is a low bar in this brave, global future.
As opposed to fuel prices, which only increase every time I visit the pump.
Who said the Democrats needed a cloture-proof majority to enact a reordering of the economy and society?
Will to power has been sanctioned, and the protestations otherwise were not found to have standing.
Color me shocked that those in power are consolidating every lever of control, as quickly as the can without shocking the body politic.
Those fences around the Capitol will be the only outward sign, other than the continuing parade of going out of business sales. But the metaphorical fences will continue to be built around the working class, taller than any erected at our southern border over the last four years.
And we all know who will be sent that bill, to go along with the lecture on privilege.
Who knows if anyone will even pay it back.
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The newest Corona Relief package looks to be steamrollering it’s way through Washington, where it might see some pushback in the Senate, but I expect the Legislative branch to revert to it’s normal - earmarks and bloated bills meant to placate favored states and loyal subjects.
Even if it requires time in conference.
Payoffs to federal workers, another voting block always in favor of bigger budgets, are included.
The explanations on why this new federal benefit can never be rolled back in future budgets should be entertaining.
The joys of “normal”… with carefully crafted legislative footnotes couched in bland language and hidden amongst hundreds of other bland sounding expenditures that invariably fund congressional pork both foreign and domestic.
It seems the height of decadence, arguing over trillions in unnecessary spending while ignoring the many facts on the ground that are at direct odds with what Washington is saying.
We have lockdowns and mandatory quarantines, while our borders are effectively open with a fingers crossed attitude. Profligate spending is the least of it, if we are being perfectly honest.
The in your face hypocrisy, outward and blatant, is a bitter pill.
And one that will need to be swallowed again and again.
It’s meant to infuriate and outrage. And it’s effective in it’s power to dissuade and disaffect a populace.
It’s also meant to obscure the actual, structural and more permanent changes occurring in real time.
The re-ordering of military goals - ultimately defense of nation - is underway and at full steam.
It started with the Navy’’s core mission statement, and has moved to the Marine Corps. According to the Commandant of our iconic and deadliest fighting force “does not aspire to win the nations wars, but to prevent non-violent competition from escalating into conflict and to enable the success of the Joint Force should escalation nonetheless occur.”
This new bit of policy speak is just getting back to the normal of endless conflicts, excuse me “non-violent competitions” and lobbing bombs of the Bush and Obama years.
But the policies and procedures that will be developed behind this shift in mission and outlook will have generational, and global, consequences.
Our national defense is being requisitioned into a global peacekeeping force... a U.N. worthy world police that Democrats of my young adulthood warned us of.
There’s no real pushback or consequence. Unless you’re counting social media slams and television and radio hits that generate more outrage about the day’s sanctioned five minutes of hate.
The influencers and narrative drivers are firmly in control of this ship. And somehow I’m not comforted by this knowledge.
And while I’d like to think that there are those in charge that know better than continuing this foolishness, well, those facts on the ground show me otherwise.
••••••••
This week Read Across America is taking place in classrooms across the country, albeit much differently than in years past.
While the methods of delivery may be a little less personable than the in person reading I was lucky enough to do at Bonita for students in some of my old elementary classrooms, sharing the joy and wonder of a good book with young, eager kids is always a worthwhile undertaking.
Read Across America was started and is celebrated in conjunction with the birthday of a writer who entered the imaginations of many Americans when they were small children... the one and only Dr. Seuss.
Whether it was counting numbers or sharing feelings, being different or learning about adulthood, Dr. Seuss wrote a book for it. Not some boring lecture, but a world filled with Thing One and Thing Two... creatures in the dark that could be scary and absurd... and some who eat green eggs and ham. Generations of children and adults whose world was expanded by the mind and magic of the celebrated author.
So of course in the year 2021, some internet clamor and outrage has come for the good doctor, and six of his books will stop being published over insensitive imagery.
An asterisk will be added to the legacy of a once ordinary man who did extraordinary things. No context, no discussion, the activist left get’s its scalp and the leaders on the right can say that it was a free market decision taken by those running the business in charge of the writer’s catalog of work.
In other words, move along.
How long should we keep moving?
How many authors from another time need to be cancelled before the mob is satisfied? Will all scandalous thought from outside the boundaries of normal be cut from society’s consciousness?
The classics are no longer essential to education; no matter whether they are great works of philosophy, epic tales of bravery and tragedy or children’s tales.
The lessons and values that have withstood centuries of enlightenment and despots alike do not mesh with the woke new world in which we all reside. The ideas, and ideals located inside those pages fly in the face of the collective mob that rules our lives.
Silencing thought, labeling opponents terrorists and creating dissident exiles - digital or otherwise - are not the signs of a return to any kind of actual normal, at least one worthy of interest to any but the most authoritarian among us.
Red fish, blue fish really doesn’t matter much once the pond is cleared.