Warning: if you are not interested in a ranting, raging Zoe, skip this posting.
Harper, my 12 year old, asked me on the way to piano lessons tonight, "What's the bailout?" As I gave her a 30 second prefatory lesson in capitalism and then attempted to explain something I barely understand myself, I grew more and more disgusted and outraged with the audacious, government supported greed in this country. And I started thinking about how already, before a real economic collapse, people I know are trying to decide between heating their homes and eating this winter. And today we in the Northeast Kingdom learned that Lydall, a big employer in our community, is downsizing. Nearly 200 jobs in a community as small as ours at a time like this is going to have a pretty devastating impact. They said in the paper today that people will have to "tighten their belts." No, people will be cold and hungry and might die. They'll have to compromise their dignity and lie and steal to survive. I hope that prediction proves wrong, but in the last few months I've seen a considerable increase in people, especially women and kids, struggling to survive. A major employer closing down will not help that situation.
Misty and I are making plans to canvass in New Hampshire, a swing state, for Obama. Not that I'm stupid enough to believe that a regime change will alleviate the suffering in my community and around that globe, and Obama is a goddamn capitalist, too, but what choices do we really have? And I signed Bernie's petition, and you should too, whatever good that might do. I think we have to figure out how to make increasingly bigger revolutionary actions, despite the risks to our personal liberties and comforts. Or, if you're like me and really don't want to go to jail, find some way to stand in solidarity with the folks who are the most profoundly affected by our fellow countrymen's greed. Maybe that is how we begin to make a revolution.
Ultimately, I explained to Harper that the foxes are guarding the hen house. She gets it. Because even though the bailout seems really complicated, the concepts are actually really simple. If only folks weren't distracted by must-see-tv and corporate sports.
2 comments:
I agree totally! Why should I literally pay for some millionaire's mistake? That's the point of the free market and capitalism: you reap the rewards and the risks of your decisions.
By the way, I like the reference to Paul's blog.
Now I know how to comment I have to go back and make some of the comments that rattled in my head. I say this, all the hopes and dreams (even the ones that are scary to my priveleged place in the world) I've had of the end of capitalism as we know it and of the world's people being able to get right sized (for some it will be coming up, for others of us we will have to step down)-- I mean if I lose some of this security, over comsumption, etc that is my American life and face the rest of my world as equals well, well, well, this might be the time that it really starts... and hey, by the way, isn't it just one of the most wonderful things in life to guide your children into critical thinking and daring to be brave.
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