Here Come Duh Flood
Maybe it was the plastic water bottle lying in the parking lot that tipped me off. Time for a flood, I said to myself. You can't say something like that out loud here in the wilds of the North State. People would think you were a terrorist from the Middle East, or from God, and planning to blow up the Shasta Dam. May they all be hunkered down in their basements when the time comes.
Litter is a bad thing, because it gratuitously makes a mess in the community and because it demonstrates sickness. No animal messes up its nest unless it's ill. No doubt our society is sick, and the scope of the dis-ease seems epidemic. Worse, it doesn't look like there is anything around or even sniffing over the horizon that would suggest that this malaise can be checked or treated. Too many people have a vested interest in staying the course.
My image, ala Indiana Jones, is of an ancient sewer conduit filled with rats, racing past and climbing over each other, trying to get ahead of the approaching wall of flame-topped water. Only in our case, we're talking about a polyglot parade of self-interest groups who have commandeered the gravy train and are heading for disaster.
Despite the marshaling of a great nation and the spending of a half-trillion dollars in the waronterrorism, we are as at risk of the same kind of attack as we were before September 11th. Our economy is slip-sliding away, though the professional cheerleaders, feathering their own nests, claim the economy is doing even better than expected. California -- the world's sixth largest economy -- is choking on a $25 billion deficit generated in only a few months by inept politicians and crooked energy traders.
Most of the nation's middle class has been living on the edge for the past decade, faced with decisions like fixing the car or buying a computer to further their children's education. The third of the population that isn't doing even that well has been sausaged through the "welfare reform" miasma, but only one out of five of them were able to climb out of the gutter.
We are living a lie. We tell ourselves that the rules are fair, and that most people are living by them. Nope, and maybe. The folks who tell the truth, who are truly generous in spirit, who hold a true commitment to working toward a healthy and productive future for their children's children's children...they are feeling the pressure.
There is chaos all around. Most of our leaders have been corrupted by corporate interests. They have mortgaged the common weal for their own re-election. They have sold our government to bottom-liners who have squelched essential social reform such as population control and restoration of the environment.
Of course, all of this could be turned on a dime, if the electorate would rise to the necessary level of awareness and do their duty at the polls. For all those who wave flags and scream for blood but fail to cast a ballot, may their boats have rotted hulls.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.
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