I was asked in another venue why I think people are especially touchy about things right now. I responded with this:
I'll post it here and see what other people think.
Does anybody here remember Carter's malaise speech? He was pilloried for that. The sad part about that is that he was right. At that time people in the US were just drained, for various reasons.
I think we've hit a similar situation. As a matter of fact, I think it's worse. Carter didn't have two badly run wars to deal with. It was a rough economy that he wasn't responsible for and I think it made sense for him to just flat-out say that things were pretty bad.
What we've got right now is 2 wars that are not going well. One of those wars had a pretty good case behind it. It's hard to argue against going into Afghanistan. I don't do that. Some people do, and their point of view is good. They could be right. But that war is almost certainly lost because we are fighting that other war.
The war in Iraq is the worst thing that has happened to this country since the civil war. That war was, at least loosely, based on a good thing. Ending slavery seems like such an obvious thing to so many people in this country right now. It wasn't so easy then. It was obvious, but not easily done. Certainly it would have been nice if it hadn't come to war, but some people didn't want to do it any other way.
What we have now is worse. The US had no business going into Iraq. There were no good reasons to do it. I suspect that if we did have good reason it would be over by now.
What's happening in Iraq is destroying our military and sapping our economy. Our economy wasn't in very good shape in the first place. Mortgage companies did stupid things to make sure they were making their profit goals and the government let this happen because they were desperate to make sure there was cash floating around to pay for all of this. The Iraq war did two things on that score. It allowed, and almost enforced, bad economic policy. And it hid the serious problems our economy has.
Of course it also allowed a very small number of people to make a large amount of money in the process. See how this works?
Now, of course, it's all hitting the fan and people are beginning to get a little scared. Every news report begins with a story about the housing market falling apart and a bunch of dead soldiers in Iraq.The rich people are even starting to get a little worried. They hitched their wagon to the Republican party and now their being led over a cliff. And a lot of poor people did the same thing because they didn't like gay people, or abortion, or whatever.
I think a lot of people are just now beginning to understand just what's going on and they're not too happy about it. They also are beginning to realize that the things that people did to change things in the 60s aren't working. They have expectations. They expect people who understand these things and are "engaged" to "do something about it". I mean, "didn't those protests in the 60s stop the Vietnam War?" Well, no, they didn't. They certainly helped, but it's a lot more complicated than that.
And most of the perceived techniques for change that the left-wing, who I think kept this country honest, used have been recuperated. They've been co-opted. Protests don't get it done anymore in this country. And change is going to have to take a little bit more work than it did. I'm not even convinced that those protests really did work in the first place. Certainly they didn't do much for the long haul. What's really frustrating is that the left-wing, who inspired the whole foundation of the ideas that inspired "recuperation" can't even figure this out. One definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome.
A lot of people are just now realizing this. This is making a lot of people very nervous and tired.
The price of milk is going up and the prices of houses are going way down and large numbers of people can't afford either one.
And then we've got this war in Iraq. It's going nowhere and most people, I think, agree that there isn't likely to be a good outcome if we stay or if we leave. Americans have grown attached to this silly idea of "closure". The universe doesn't really have much room for that idea. And international relations and politics rarely allow for any kind of "closure". What happens happens and bad decisions tend to have bad effects.
People are nervous right now. They have good reason for it, as far as I'm concerned.
phat