Sour Grapes for the Economy

I don't know what it's like to be very poor, to have no home, to depend on public assistance or the kindness of strangers. But I've spent the last decade or so worrying about things like finding work, losing my home, and watching my meager bank accounts dance feebly around the brink of disaster. I've rarely had enough not to worry about the necessities, and very rarely had enough to cover anything extra.

I have no sympathy for your 401K. I really don't feel much panic about the global or national economy. I had nothing in common with you when you talked your portfolios and investments. I barely had anything in common with you when you talked about your gadgets and vacations and designer crap. I was not envious then, and I'm not sympathetic now.

When I'm no longer seeing salesmen touting the glories of various disposable and damaging products, when I no longer see pharmaceutical companies advertising penis-lengthening and hair-restoring medication, when I no longer see car companies cranking out suburban pimp tanks...that's when I'll start giving weight to your worries.

You brought it on yourselves. Every little detail that you needed to know was readily available. You dismissed all the criticisms and submerged yourselves in self-satisfied rationalizations for greed and lies. You prostituted yourselves and submitted to cheap authority, you smirked and manipulated and insinuated yourselves into a corrupt and inhuman structure...and didn't even care enough to see how poorly that structure was built.

I'm not even going to say that I told you so, or that I was ahead of the curve, or any of that rubbish. Partly because I'd be ashamed of it, but mostly because you just don't get it. That much is obvious. In a year or two, you'll all be back to your same old tricks. You and your representatives will find some way to keep this horrible beast lurching forward on its last gangrenous legs, and the fashionably false and pragmatically brutal folks will still inevitably come out ahead. The world will continue to rot and burn for the Greater Good, and we'll all find more convincing ways to tell ourselves that we're Doing Our Best.

I don't know which is more depressing: contemplating a few years of increasingly unpleasant and muddled attempts to Fix the Problem, or contemplating the resulting few final centuries of Business as Usual for humanity. Maybe the only thing left to hope for is that we'll at least have enough class to make a swift and total end of ourselves before we ruin everything else.

Yep, I'm apathetic and fatalistic. I'm not jumping aboard any crusade of Faith and Hope and Action. Why should I? The future of humanity is not something I feel all that willing to work towards...perhaps if we'd had a few less enlightened and empowered people in our history, we'd have had a much more difficult time conquering, raping, and subjugating the world. All those great leaders and thinkers led us to this day- we can't even imagine what horrors could come from a few more people with inspiration and charisma and good old-fashioned know-how.

I will miss the artists and lovers, though. Humanity's most complimentary epitaph would read: "Some were infrequently capable of true beauty."