Timeframes to fix things

My brother posted a comment that really is worth a full on rant. It was also the inspiration for the short prohibition rant, so thanks for that, Bubba. The chattering class and the Sabbath gasbags seem to be treating the current economic crisis as something that can be turned around by Christmas. If we just figure out which lever to pull, everything will be fine and we’ll be refinancing our houses for flat screen TVs and all will be well with the world. No, no, no, a thousand times no.

Anyone who’s been listening to me the last, what 4 or 5 years, knows I expect the end of capitalism and our living standards as we’ve know them the last quarter century. Anyone under 50 has never been an adult in a REAL recession, and I can tell you they suck big time. I got out of college and started looking for work the exact month unemployment hit its post WWII peak at almost 10%.

Let me tell you that sucks big time. The guy cleaning the Slurpee machine at 7-11 had a PhD in physical chemistry. No shit. I moved furniture for $3 an hour for six months, with a freshly minted BA in Economics from a snotty New England college, hustled my ass off and got nothing but hundreds of rejection letters.

Anyway, compared to the 1930’s and the shit coming down the pike, that was a walk in the park. In the immortal words of Bob Marley, a hungry mob is an angry mob. When was the last time you saw a mob of hungry Americans? Sure there are pockets of poverty that bad in America, but when it’s all you’ve ever know, it’s different. I’m talking former real estate agents, former bankers, former hedge fund quants, real live hungry, angry, no make that furious, previously spoiled and entitled upper-middle class Americans actually spending days, weeks and months without nearly enough to eat. How pissed will they be? How pissed would you be? I know how pissed I’d be, and I’m not even the violent type.

How can an American administration react in the face of widespread, I mean really widespread, Dustbowl style poverty and hunger? I’m one hell of a lot more optimistic about Obama/Biden handling it than Bush/Cheney. (Concentration camps? Americans at Gitmo?)

Think about it, we can’t just have thousands of Americans living on the streets, on a constant prowl for food. Churches have always pissed me off by their very existence, as they represent a waste of resources for a guy who doesn’t need a house, being empty 99% of the time and NOT providing for people who really need shelter. Maybe to keep their tax-exempt status, the churches would be required to offer up half of their total floor space for people needing a roof over their heads.

I can hear the squeals of complaint about socialism and God helps those who help themselves and why don’t they just get jobs. Such has become the state of the church in America. If anyone cares to actually read the New Testament, I can’t think of anything Jesus would more approve of, but I guarantee not 1% of American Christian churches, in a nation housing crisis and in the midst of Great Depression 2, will open their doors to people needing a place to crash. On second thought, the Unitarians would, but they aren’t “real” Christians anyway.

Imagine thousands of acres of tents, pallets of MRE's, virtual refugee camps right here in the good ol' US of A. Imagine the politics of this country would change in a way that will make the last election look like a reelection.

Bottom line here is that we are in for a very rough 8 or 10 years, that very few living Americans can recall or even imagine. I wonder how we’ll get through it? We’ll certainly see the best and the worst of people, cuz nothing brings out one’s true nature like true need.