My brother sends me a link to a polemic by Joe Bageant. My reply:
A passionate polemic, seductive in its combination of apparent political and financial savviness, high-level generalization, defrocked moral preaching, enemy-finding, self-pitying despair, self-castigation. Clearly one who has adopted Marcuse's Marxian-Freudian notion of "introjection". And one who secretly welcomes gotterdammerung because (surely) it is the necessary precondition of rebirth and the Golden Society. Don't believe his reference to species extinction - if he believed that he wouldn't bother to praise the international South American bartering system.
Yes, the system is in crisis - but it's fixable. The US medical system is about 3 times more expensive per capita than in the UK, there's a lot of room to cut costs. When the dollar crashes and house prices hit the floor, people won't have to earn the same money as before to make a living, and they'll begin to compete in the global market. And we surely don't really need the level of material possessions we have now, nice though it can be.
Where I do agree with this Jeremiah, is that a load of fat b*st*rds will have to be trimmed.
Put me down as a hope fiend.
3 comments:
There is also an incredible amount that could be cut from the military budget, most of which appears only to help out certain arms manufacturers, and not the troops or national security.
Six pages of rambling, unrelenting 'we're doomed!'
Well, we're in a pickle, to be sure. I think the extreme Jeremiah types are actually more like Jonah, who after his unfortunate incarceration in the belly of the fish, showed up in Nineveh(as originally instructed), delivered the 'Repent or Perish' message, and then retreated under his gourd plant to watch for The End.
Which never came, because the city changed its ways.
Jonah was one angry mo'fo', because he had been promised a front-row seat as fire fell from the heavens.
He didn't factor in that history and culture do not operate in a straight line. And that grace can descend as well as fire, dependent upon circumstances.
BTW, I've been to Ajijic. It's an outpost of Paradise. Lived about an hour away myself. Very easy to get caught up in that dreamy 'Margaritaville' existence, disdainful of conditions 'back up north'. A wonderful place to live, if you don't intend to get much done...
Paddington - better to start with quangos and hare-brained Brownian schemes.
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