Category: politics

Los Angeles is the Hollywood Sign

Los Angeles has always been a city of contradictions.   For one thing, most of its citizens share a love hate relationship with the city.   It is a Western City, populated at first by New Yorkers and Mid-Westerners, and now with people from every part of the globe.   It is an American city with an Hispanic past.   Its major products are agrarian, technology, and dreams.

It has been ridiculed of its tackiness and referred to as Tinsel Town.  Yet with the suburbanization of most cities in America, with their endless grids of  unremarkable houses in predictable tracts all punctuated by a series of shopping malls and big box stores, the City of Los Angeles, has become incredibly unique to itself.  On one hand when you live in Los Angeles you are aware that this may be the vanguard of American living.  If only the rest of America didn’t despise us so much.   You live here at the far end of America.  When you visit anywhere else you feel more like you have been living on the moon.

The City of the Angels one of the most populous urban areas in the nation.  Yet it’s odd and endless grids are offset by a large array of year round foliage, replete with any number of exotic plants, desert vegetation, oaks, maples, Bougainvillea, Jacaranda, and the occasional Willow.  The houses themselves are a flurry and mix and match of architectural types, with Tudors standing next door to Spanish Mission, next to mid century modern, next to the sleek, contemporary pronouncements of the twenty first century.  All encapsulated by an endless ribbon of freeways, highways,  boulevards, and narrow, winding canyon roads.   A city with extreme wealth and extreme poverty, luxury landscapes and urban blight, all embraced by the Pacific Ocean to the West and Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountain ranges to its north and east.

LA has probably the worst urban gridlock.  It is a once flat city going high rise.    Yet in some parts of the city urban sprawl is being witnessed by decidedly non-urban creatures like deer and coyote.  This is in addition to the opossums, snakes and wildcats, vying for space with major street gangs and gangs of paparazzi.   It is some mix, and confused chroniclers of the city have labored for years to analyze the contradictions.

In my twenties, I remember when the richest part of Beverly Hills, the rich flats resplendent then with celebrities and wealthy replicants of  the post-Ozzie and Harriet era,  living just across the street from the Wonder Bread Factory.  Here were houses envied by much of a nation, to say nothing of the Beverly Hills City Hall and Police Station, all enduring the smell of sugar and yeast from what was then the biggest bread maker in the country.

Los Angeles has long been denigrated for its lack of culture and abundance of nut jobs.  But meanwhile, it has long been the political sanctuary for creative refugees, be it the Mexican artists, fleeing the Mexican Revolution, or the Europeans fleeing Hitler’s scourge.   Despite the long standing and tired joke that the main culture here is in yogurt, the art scene flourishes as one of the most dynamic in the world.   There are many literary luminaries living here, and a media and entertainment center it is second to none.   As for the nut jobs, there are many, but the city’s financial and legal centers impact greatly the economics of Asia Pacific and global economics in general.

LA is the world-wide capital for self absorption.  It is a powerful city, where many adults still dress like children.  Yet it is for the most part a bastion of liberal politics, and more ethnically diverse than just about any other city.   LA is a city where people don’t care much about your background, the color of your skin and to which religion you cast your prayers.   They care instead about what you do and what you drive.   They care about how you look and what you wear, and whether you are smart enough to seize on opportunity when it air kisses your front door.

So it is small wonder, that at least part of the consciousness of Los Angeles would be symbolized by the Hollywood Sign.  Why is this a contradiction?  At least for a city that likes to knock things down and build things new things in their place, thus reinventing itself and nullifying history, the temporarily constructed Hollywood sign remains a part of our permanent history.  But maybe not for long.

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In 1949 the City Council in its great wisdom ordered  the “land” part of the sign to be removed so it could become the enduring symbol of the center of the earth, as least as far as the motion picture industry was concerned.   But structures made of wood and  sheet metal were not meant to endure, and the sign fell in and out of disrepair.  Its durability wasn’t helped any when people crashed their cars into it, vandalized it, and even jumped from it; as in one case where a failed and forlorn Hollywood actress jumped from the letter “H.”

Like many actors of a certain age, the sign may have looked good from a distance, but up close it was looking aged and worn, and perhaps only worth advertising that the once glamorous Hollywood proper was now populated by hookers and junkies, and tourists still gaping at the concrete feet of celebrities outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theater.

In 1978, the sign was in such disrepair that the city launched a fund raising drive to replace the letters.   In steel. At the time, the cost of replacement was $250,000 or so.  Alice Cooper donated a new letter “O” along with his manager at the time, Shep Gordon.   To garner donations, pieces of the old sign were embedded in Lucite and sold or given away.   A friend gave me one of those, and to this day it still adorns one of my bookshelves.   Despite the passing of years, I still find it oddly reassuring, a relic of accidental permanence in an impermanent environment.

More work was done on the sign in 2005 and 2006.  Like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard, it needs maintenance.

So where is the big contradiction?   Okay, if it is not a contradiction, then its is surely ironic.  The Hollywood Sign started out as an advertisement for a housing development.  And now, Fox River Financial Resources, Inc, wants to disrupt its solitary presence by putting up a housing development on the 138 acres of surrounding land.    The real estate development will either jeopardize the Hollywood Sign or make it awfully damned ugly to look at with a bunch of houses in its perimeter.

The City of Los Angeles and its Trust for Public Land has but three more days to raise an additional $2.8 million of the $12 Million in total needed to buy the land from Fox River, which bought it from the Hughes estate in 2002 for $1.7 Million.  A nice profit.   For what Los Angeles considers one of its historical treasures.

Personally, I want to see the sign saved.  A few luxury houses on the mountain crest will hardly substitute for the sheer beauty of the mountainous area, a rare bit of space unmolested by our problematic need to build on every piece of vacant land.   As these are to be four luxury houses developed on this parcel, the abusively rich can find another place to park their ass.    We would miss the sign, but hardly the cretins intent on their fiefdoms.  The Hollywood Sign, after all, does symbolize Los Angeles.

Old Buildings and the Age of Raze

There is a famous line in the film, Chinatown.  John Houston’s Noah Cross character, proclaims, “I’m old.  Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”

I am not sure about politicians anymore, and the whores of today may not be as respectable overtime as the prostitutes of legend.   But we tend to venerate old buildings as iconic symbols of architecture, even when clearly, they were little more than utilitarian eyesores that retain as their only real distinguishing characteristic is a sense of another time.   I was reminded of this in an article in the Los Angeles Time, entitled,  Some Disquiet on These L.A. Film Sets.

The article called attention to the Linda Vista Community Hospital, which has been closed since 1991.   Initially, this was the Santa Fe Coast Lines Hospitals.  It was built by the railroad for treating its workers.   It is the mission style, well appointed, wither verandas, a dome tower, and views of downtown L.A.   It was a good hospital with special care for the railroad workers.   It was the model of medical care when unions in general had little in the way of mental health programs for their members.   This was early, integrated healthcare at its best.

But in the 1970’s complaints arose from the neighboring Latino community that the modest, 150-bed capacity was too exclusive in its treatments and wasn’t attending to those in the area.   The Railroad sold the hospital in 1981, to a corporation.   Come the late eighties and the decrease in Medicare reimbursements forced the hospital to close a couple of years later.   The property value dropped from $10 million to around $4 million.

It stood there.  An empty shell in disrepair, selling again and again to six different owners, all with plans of converting the building to anything from a charter school, to residential lofts.   But each owner found their ideas demolished in the face of reality as each realized the cost of rehabilitating the vacant structure was far too great and far too problematic.

So you think the building would be deemed incapable of providing a decent function, razed, and on the large parcel of land just adjacent to downtown Los Angeles, a new structure could be erected.  Well, no.   It turns out, in 2002, a former tenant filed to have the hospital placed on the National Registry of Historic Places, where it rests to this day.

The building sits, as the Times article says, “in purgatory.”  It is outmoded, outdated and otherwise falling apart.   Because it is now on the historic building, a new owner can’t knock it down, can’t renovate it for fear it would lose its original form….can’t do much at all.   Except the vagrants, street gangs, rats, and others who venture into the building intimidated neither by the omnipresent ghost stories and the menace of mold.

Film crews film in the hospital.   They shoot everything from horror stories to party scenes.    The crews disclose cold sports in the hallways and the eerie feeling in certain parts of the building.    Paranormal group venture forth and attempt to discover and communicate the spirits living within.  And one custodian, Jesus Mena, takes the bus thirty miles or so up from Norwalk to sweep the floors and tend to the remnants.  He doesn’t get paid for his efforts, but finds taking care of the building gives him peace of mind of sorts.

The thing is, some former tenant, a renter, filed to have this building designated an historical landmark, and now no one has a clue what to do with it, except to use it as an increasingly decrepit film set.   The former tenant isn’t the first to volunteer a building as an historical landmark.  In fact, in Los Angeles, it is pretty easy to get something on the Los Angeles or National Register of Historic Places.

This will give you the general idea–

  1. What is the Process for Designating a Building as a Historic-Cultural Monument?
    Applications for designation are made to the Cultural Heritage Commission, which are reviewed by the
    Commission’s staff for completeness. The Commission conducts a series of public meetings (including a
    tour of the property) before voting on whether or not to designate the property. If affirmative, the
    Commission sends its recommendation to the City Council Planning and Land Use Committee.
    A hearing is held and the committee gives its recommendation to the City Council, which makes
    the final determination, also at a public meeting.

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  2. What are the Criteria for Designation?

These criteria are deliberately broad enough to include a wide variety of historic resources, but a proposed
resource should have sufficient architectural, historical, and/or cultural significance to warrant
designation. A proposed resource may be eligible for designation if it meets only one of the criteria
above.
Who Can Submit a Nomination?
Anyone can submit a Historic-Cultural Monument (HCM) nomination to the Cultural Heritage
Commission (CHC) – the property owner, any other individual, or a group. The City Council may also propose sites for Historic-Cultural Monument status, a process that is typically initiated through a motion introduced by an individual council member.

Buildings are somewhat like people.  Some are beautiful and stay that way.   They may age, get a little long in the tooth and threadbare, but they are still structures worthy of our admiration.  Some buildings, like people, may start out looking pretty unappealing but over time either their features mature or something about them grows on the common aesthetic, a change of perspective, and voila, it’s a thing of beauty.   But not all of them are particularly beautiful or even relatively attractive.   Some of them, like people, start out homely, and end up looking uglier over time.

But then some are just bland.    There is nothing going on.  The inside is a big nothing, as is the exterior.   They are just there, functional in their times, but, otherwise, nothing to write home about.   And  nothing to preserve.   The  vast pre and post-war apartment buildings that were once so pervasive in Southern California come immediately to mind.

Perhaps then the difference between buildings and people is that people may be homely on the outside and beautiful within.   With buildings, an ugly exterior usually denotes an interior just as pathetic in design.  An ugly brute of a structure that was functional in its time.

So why is it so easy for some dimwit to pronounce some old piece of real estate an architectural treasure so it becomes this unwieldy example of urban desolation more suited to a crack house than restoration.   This, mind you, is not just for large building.  I am aware of ramshackle Craftsman Houses and cheap shingled early subtracts that have also been anointed by the National Registry.   The pre-war and post-war apartment buildings, hideously bland, replete with the anemic electrical wiring of an early age, and, largely, an eyesore have in some cases also been designated as great pieces of our history.

Mind you, I am all for preserving our heritage.  I love old buildings, especially old, beautiful buildings, but even old buildings that have unique qualities and the capability to be upgraded so that they function in the modern age.   I think a fair amount of structures should be preserved and nurtured, retrofit and upgraded.   I was thrilled when Ellis Island was rescued from total desolation and returned to its better grace.

But we are not talking here about the Notre Dame Cathedral or the great townhouses of the 19th century.  We are not talking about the California Missions, also rescued from total ruin, or the old Hollywood theater palaces that have been converted to legitimate theaters.   We are not talking about buildings that can be rehabilitated and upgraded so that the owners can enjoy the kind of lifestyle represented by the current century.

We are talking here of some ugly buildings that some dimwit decided it was worth preserving.   Not a group of city docents, or a flock of historians who understand the importance of a certain structure.   We are talking about someone who is renting and doesn’t want the property bought and from under them, converted to a more modern facility so that it is priced out of their budget.

The former Linda Vista Community Hospital is a more attractive building than most.   But it can no longer function in its present state.  If it represents anything to the community, then it represents urban blight and a time that has long since slipped away.   Like other buildings of its sort, it sits on a rather large parcel of land.   This land could be used for far better purposes than a moldy repose for ghost stories and roving thugs.

Like other buildings of  its sort, it is time to knock it down.

The Enduring Easter Bunny Fetish

I was going to write something more serious when my eye caught a photo on the Sunday Los Angeles Times where two security guards were trying to wrest a large plastic trash bag from the hands of one of the prodigious street vendors  working the downtown area. The large plastic trash bag was filled with rabbits. Easter rabbits.

It would make sense that come the Easter Holiday, rabbits would be a featured attraction in the hustling market area known as Santee Alley. Santee Alley is roughly ten square blocks and is centered by the alley itself where clustered stalls offer the shopper everything from cheap toys and electronics, to knock off designer jeans and counterfeit designer wallets and handbags, and the ubiquitous bootleg DVD’s.   And animals. On any given day iguanas and large, green turtles are offered for sale, with the occasional chicken or rooster.

The vendors are a polyglot of ethnic diversity, a regular lower shelf market bazaar where unclaimed shipments from China and irregular offloads compete with the counterfeit accessories to attract the passersby.   To be kind, Santee Alley is not typically filled with high earners, unless they are slumming or looking for the odd bargain on counterfeit purses they don’t mind carrying to  buffer the bad economy while still impressing their friends.   It is more the working class shopping mecca, mothers in toy with their multiple children, the in-laws and grandparents tootling on behind.

On weekends, the Santee Alley area is seriously crowded and to enter the Alley itself one does the slow shopping shuffle. Some vendors will proffer their wares, and others may whisper that lurking inside the canvas duffel bags or plastic garbage bags in the back of the stall some fine counterfeit handbags, wallets, jeans, DVD’s and whatever are waiting for your perusal. Some will claim they come from the same manufacturer as the original authentic designer version.  Some are too bored to bother with any conceivable ruse.

But it is Easter time and there are rabbits.  People often ask how rabbits came into the Easter story, but I have no definitive idea.   Something about fertility, as with the eggs, those painted eggs, signifying fertility and renewal.  If rabbits laid eggs it would be an easier legend to comprehend.   But they don’t. So suffice it to say the fertility aspect of Easter is left to both mammals and fowl, humans notwithstanding.   Humans having sex and multiplying, despite all Biblical notions, is something to be kept on the quiet.   Even if the concept of human sex oddly is an obscure notion given the large families in Santee Alley.

But to the rabbits.   So here are the rabbits in little cages, being offered for sale at the going rate of $20 apiece.   That seems expensive, but then I am hardly the rabbit farmer of legend.   In fact in my youth and relative innocence I had one bunny that I kept over Easter and then gave back to the pet store, once I discovered all rabbits really do is wiggle their noses and crap round turds just about everywhere they travel.   But my brief rabbit ownership came a long time ago when the information network was confined to pretty much what your parents told you and what Cold War events were delivered on only three television stations.   In one’s ignorance about esoteric things about rabbits and such, one just went with the flow until self-discovery changed the course of direction.

Of course these were the times when pet shops and farmers markets sold painted turtles and spray painted chickens, all done up in Easter colors of pink and yellow.   For the most part, the whole Easter chicken and rabbit business was a genocide program.   The dyes in the spray paint would usually kill the baby chicks soon after sale.  Although I did have one friend who actually raised the chicken to maturity.   It was so odd seeing a grown chicken living in a console television box in the basement of a row house.   It was if nothing else a marked testament to survival.
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The turtles were year round and survived longer, despite the garish colored images that were spray painted on their shells.  Longer here is a relative issue, as was survival.   Everyone I knew had a story about the dog or cat eating the baby chicks and rabbits, or giving the rabbits to the neighbors where it was eaten for dinner the following night.   The turtles would escape from their plastic bowls and either be eaten by the cats or lost to the crevices in the house or found a week later a victim of the rinse cycle on the washing machine.

But that was long ago.  For the most part I thought the whole Easter Bunny fetish was long gone, along with the painted baby chicks, as the society has advanced and had access to information regarding the health and well being of these long eared creatures.  I guess not.   According to the Times article, the Bunny trade is booming.  These are young rabbits that are not weaned and suffering from malnutrition.   In all, buying one of these rabbits and taking it home gives a whole new meaning to dead on arrival.

But, either way, once purchased for the Big Easter pageant, the Easter Bunny is in for a real rough time.  He is either DOA, perhaps a mercy killing given the choices.    Or the rabbit who lives through the rigors of the holiday season may ultimately face extermination when he wears out his welcome.  Perhaps as  the main course for a Saturday dinner,  if  he miraculously manages to grow plump and mature.

The Los Angeles Security Guards and law enforcement authorities try their best to rein in the illegal Easter Bunny Business.   They rescue these poor creatures and place them in a shelter where they at least have a chance to survive.   The rabbits are fed kitten formula and colostrum pills.  The ubiquitous lettuce the condemned rabbits are seen nibbling on ever so cutely will destroy the system of young rabbits.

Oh well…rabbits and lettuce…another myth all shot to hell.   So this is pretty serious, after all.  Happy Easter.

The Vintage Whine of Academia

Some years ago when asked his opinion about campus politics, Henry Kissinger said, “University politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.”   This was an interesting response and one that has endured with me for quite some time.    Nevertheless,  when confronting academia, socially or otherwise,  it isn’t long before  Kissinger’s explanation of the vicissitude of campus politics regurgitates like a bad burrito.  I am struck by how  so many academics are sad cases burdened by the years of repetition that has led in many cases to a total lack of originality in thought  and expression.

Given that I have a jaundiced view of much of academia, I still found it surprising that several professors claimed that tenure fights are stressful and can lead to emotional breakdowns.   According to  an article in Boston.com, entitled Professors Say Tenure Fights Creates High Stress Situations,   David Yamada, director of the New Workplace Institute at Suffolk University Law School, and James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology, law, and public policy, at Northeastern University urged separately that the Universities should reevaluate the tenure process.  They urged that the tenure process be more transparent and less “gut wrenching,,” as Fox put it.

Yamada noted that college officials should be “more in tune with the psychological health of the tenure-seeking professor.   It was noted in the article that the tenure process can take about six or seven years and prove very stressful.  Those applying for tenure, it was reported, are under intense scrutiny and may have to contemplate the possibility of failure.    All in all, the article described the tenure process as long and tough.  It can make the teacher a nervous wreck.   It can lead to tragedy.

The two professors cited the recent incident with Amy Bishop as an example.  Bishop was the Harvard educated professor who when denied tenure shot six college professors at the University of Alabama.  She killed three and wounded three others.   This was their example of a stressed out tenure applicant, reacting to the pressure.   They did admit this may be an extreme case, but still…oh the pressure.

Never mind that Amy Bishop had a history of nutty behavior.  Not the least of that nutty behavior was the reported accidental killing of her brother.   Her finger was somehow on the trigger and, BANG, the shotgun just went off.  This is a woman with all sorts of graduate degrees and a Harvard education who reportedly had a problem cleaning a shotgun..   Well…okay.

This was the Amy Bishop who was charged with assault at an IHOP, after demanding another customer yield her booster seat so Bishop could use it for her child.  When the woman refused, Bishop punched at her and screamed some not-very-professorial epithets at the poor woman.   This nut job who should have never been teaching in the first place  is their example of tenure stress.

I take issue with the two denizens of the Ivory Tower, by writing every job worth having is stressful.    Every day in the real world people sweat out their working careers, hoping they are not fired because of age, race,  or sexual or social predilections.   They hope they won’t be downsized because of a merger and acquisition.   They pray they won’t be laid off with the economic meltdown.

What kind  of insular perspective believes that academics should not be under scrutiny for performance and ability?  This is the case in private industry, so why not at a college or university?   You can be sure at that same college or university someone is eyeballing the janitor to make sure he is doing his job.   The kid at the local Dominoes better not burn too many pizzas, otherwise he is out pocket money for his condoms and pot.   Everybody is under stress.

In fact, with the economic downturn, millions are out of work and the millions left are forced to pick up the slack of being overwhelmed and undermanned.    Employers are working with bare bones staffs, and heaven forbid if they can’t maintain performance.  Everyday millions of people either hope to hang onto their jobs or strive to find another one.

There are millions or workers out there who aren’t just stressed, but terrified they will lose their jobs.   Some, like Amy Bishop, who are tightly wrapped, have revisited their workplace to shoot and kill their bosses and fellow workers.  Most won’t.  Most will steel up and do the best they can, given the fears and pressures of unemployment.

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But this sudden whining about the tenure process is the equivalent of academic dodge ball.  Some educators decided recently that the competition in dodge ball engenders negative extreme issues.    The same here holds true.   Competition apparently is not seen as distinguishing the best of our educators.    Instead, competition is viewed as the enervating demon that hovers about, nullifying the creative process.

In fact, one has to look askance in general at the creative process in academia..  Not to paint it with a broad brush, but I have never been overly impressed with creativity among academics.   There are exceptions, and there are certainly are those who have distinguished themselves in various endeavors in the private sector and decided to give back to the community by teaching at universities.    There are those who have distinguished themselves in more esoteric pursuits, and though their creativity is well received in a niche market, they can’t make a living  just by what they produce.   So they teach.  Understood.

There are exceptions among those in the  physical and economic sciences who through private funding and university resources  perform  much needed research and development that can benefit us all.   And there are those who are simply damn good teachers.

But then there are there those who engage in the campus politics of Kissinger’s description.   This is their world.   they live in it and even thrive in it.   In the real world, where you actually have to actualize theory, many will perish.   It is a group dependent on grants and foundational offerings and neither entrepreneurial or self-sufficient.

They give pointed views on subjects and issues that are best left to theory.   They pronounce with certainly ambiguous concepts that simply can’t flourish any other place but academia.   They impose questionable points of view on our kids and rigid definitions of creativity and artistry.    Anything other than their own insulated thoughts are threatening and deemed the prejudices of the ignorant and misinformed.

And then they complain that their jobs are stressful.  Tenure is a demoralizing bitch of a process that in its extreme can lead to bloodshed on the ivy.   Teaching is tough.  Life is tough.  They are under scrutiny.   They are being forced to perform.

Well cowboy up.   And get real.  At least you are working.

When Unemployment Makes You Goofy

These are tough times.  These are tough times globally, but for the United States this is also no day a the beach.  These are tough times economically, what with personal wealth devastated by the real estate  market, the depletion of pensions funds.  Money is scarce and credit is tight.

What money there is in the banks and among the fat cats is being horded.   The government seems weak and ineffective in forcing the banks to literally get off a dime.   While the media shifts back and forth, trumpeting contradictory statistics, supposed financial and industrial experts inveigh equally conflicting predictions about the the economic recovery.   The more honest of the pundits, after hemming and hawing on air time, in order to collect their money or sell their book, finally admit, “hell, I don’t know.”

Whether there will be an economic recovery or where there will be a double dip, where the economy drops, recovers and then drops again like some erratic  roller coaster ride, it all remains to be seen.   Meanwhile, people need to find work.  They need to make bucks just to survive or in the luckier cases supplement their diminished savings, before it leaves them looking like bit players in “The Grapes of Wrath.”

So where do you find work when there is not work?  Good question.  Where do you find work when a great many jobs have either been rendered obsolete or have been outsourced to another country?   Simply.  Why you go to Disneyland, of course.

If not Disneyland, then you attend the job fairs at any one of the amusement parks and destination sites where people with a couple of bucks left still take their families.   According to an article in The Los Angeles Times, amusement park job fairs are enjoying, if that’s the word, record turnouts.   It’s not just kids anymore, recent high school and college graduates looking for a summer job or something to do until they can find something else, that are attending the job fairs.   Be it the Disney Parks, Knotts Berry Farm, Six Flags,  Universal Studios, or  Hoolah’s Tuba Land, job candidates from every background and of every description are lining up and looking for work.

At a recent job fair at Six Flags Magic Mountain, in Valencia, California, more than 1,600 applicants stood in line in search of work.  Another 1,100 attended the job fair at Universal Studios,  Hollywood.   Those who attended were mortgage agents and sales clerks.   These are teachers and construction workers, forklift operators.  These are office managers and restaurant managers, loan processors and once-retired seniors who thought they had enough to retire until the economic meltdown and the loss to their portfolio and pensions made them think again.

These are people looking to work for less than $400 a week.    To be  Goofy in an amusement park.    In this day and age, $400 a week is a long way from big money.  It is a long way from what most of us deem “a living.”  It is the kind of salary that makes you feel impotent and humiliated, that assures your purchases will be largely guided by what is being featured at the Dollar Store.   It is the kind of money that allows you to believe at least you are doing something to tide you over and feed your family, until something better comes along.  And then, if nothing better does come along, it is the kind of money that reminds you at the end of every week there is probably no way out.

In short, we have not only ruined an economy.  We have damaged its people.   Through greed, unnecessary risk, and blatant audacity we have all but bankrupted a country.   We have caused such grievous harm to ourselves, and yet we wonder why there are so many among us who become Tea Baggers or whatever, to vent their anger.   No matter how misdirected we believe the anger may be, there is no denying people have the right to be extremely pissed off.

We have allowed the few, the venal, and the undisciplined to not only steal away our money but steal away our future as well.  For this they are rewarded.   For this, we make excuses and mumble something about our institutions being too big to fail and then pray that people will be distracted by one more stupid romance, an athlete gone awry, or a prefabricated news event.   We hope that the distractions will prevent the anger from escalating into more tangible manifestations, other than parading around with misspelled signs.

Some claim this is the Great Recession and second only to our Great Depression.  While much of it may be true, I also beg to differ.   When the Great Depression ended, American people had jobs to which they could return.  We had our industries intact.  There wasn’t talk of technical innovations and alternate fuel sources creating new jobs, while our present industries were demoted to the trash heaps or shipped offshore.    We didn’t have a situation where the greatest concern was the bottom line, to the point where industries were downsized and American workers deemed obsolete by virtue of their professions and job descriptions.
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When we recovered from the Great Depression, there was industry and with the industry there were jobs.  And from the jobs came money, and with the money people were able to buy what they needed.  But after the Great Recession, many jobs are gone and will never return to these shores.   These were jobs were people worked, made their livings, had their dignity.   But not now.

If there are no jobs, then where do people come up with the money to buy what they need?  How do they send their kids to school?   How do they enjoy the brief time they have on Earth?   Certainly those who used Tarp money to consolidate their own businesses and award themselves bonuses haven’t given it much consideration.   Clearly, from the way they ran this country into the ground,  they are not prone to think that far in advance.

In short, we may have demoted ourselves to a second tier nation.   We have former industrial workers now performing menial service tasks in rusted and blighted cities.   We have journalists out of work, news sources collapsing around us.  Small businesses are in jeopardy and have no credit sources.    We have collapsing infrastructures and a public education system that does anything but make our kids competitive in the global economy.

I know, I hear others say, “well hey compared to other countries around the world, we are still doing pretty well.”   This is sophistry.     We have been reduced as a nation to comparing ourselves to less fortunate nations, developing nations, so that we can somehow feel better about our own condition.   It is no longer a nation where we are looking toward a brighter future, except for maybe in television commercials and in the rhetoric of politicians.    Never mind that our condition stinks, and as adults we are looking for jobs in a theme park.   We should take refuge in the fact our long term outlook isn’t quite as dismal as that of some other country.

In an oblique way, it may be a good thing millions of us are on Prozac or some other antidepressant.   If not, then the wacky outbursts we are seeing in the news with increasing frequency may turn into ever more violent wacky outbursts.  The pissed off may become more organized and encourage true public disobedience.  The Tea Baggers in true American tradition may put down those misspelled signs, grab a little tar and feathers,  and start hoisting the bonus babies on rails.   Out of work intellectuals could join them, along with the downsized and disenfranchised and the permanently neglected.

I am not saying this should happen.  There are better ways to address our problems and to solve the present and future crises.   But when the political body proves unresponsive,  and when people feel they are being overtaxed and without representation, true representation, legislators concerned with the public interest and not lining their own pockets, then history dictates that things can get out of hand.   History is indeed in this way a cruel teacher.  History is an even harsher teacher when its lessons are ignored.

I don’t believe we are in anyway near the breaking point, reaching critical mass, if you will, where the people start acting up and the Shays Rebellion and the Boston Tea Party start looking like good ideas.   I think we are a country too smart to tear itself entirely apart, having learned that lesson 150 years ago in our previous debacle known as The Civil War.   But life is full of surprises, and with the advent of modern media and technology, news travels fast if not all that accurately.

But let’s face it.   Unemployed people need something to do.   If you are an adult and working a menial job for $400 a week, then the magic is gone from our magic mountain.