"Anguish sandwich" tee hee. That right here is what we call hyperbole.
For me, the issue is still the economy.
I know. I'm a bore.
Blah blah blah, unemployment, blah blah blah, foreclosure, blah blah blah, where are my pants, blah blah blah, I checked under the couch, blah blah blah, don't you think I'd check under the couch, blah blah blah.
But at the end of the day, and during the day...and when I get up in the morning...and while I'm brushing my teeth...and while I'm turning on the water faucet to water my garden...I think constantly about the damn economy: the god damned lousy mother-lickin' economy.
Yes.
Yes I care. I care about everything else. I care.
I do.
Look at me. Look at how I care.
Do you see the care? My face is filled with care.
Look at it.
But I don't feel everything else on an hourly or minutely basis. I don't pause when making a sandwich to reflect on fuel standards or Guantanamo detainees like I reflect that we're going to have to buy more peanut butter and probably more milk for the 1 year old which will cost money that I wish we could send to pay down what we owe to the doctor.
It's the economy that really occupies my minute by minute consideration.
And maybe that makes me a bad person. A selfish guy. Maybe it does. I have children and maybe I hide behind them...I hold up the children who need food and shelter and clothes and medical attention like a "get out of selfish free" card "HA! Look! I'm fighting for them!" Or maybe I really am fighting for them. Maybe I genuinely feel like dragging discourse back to the US economy, to the unemployed, to the years it's going to take to prop us back up even if the "recession" ends tomorrow...maybe I genuinely feel like dragging discourse back to that will somehow help. Will somehow kick our representatives into gear. Will somehow serve my community and family, as this contraction in employment and work continues to constrict us.
And maybe...just maybe I'm not the only one.
Maybe there are others out there who are still in this same place, staring at the sky, waiting for the rain. We talk about other stuff with a distracted, far-off look in our eyes because our minds are only half, if that, in the conversation, because mortgage is due, rent is due, we're mentally calculating how we're going do divide up checks from our employers or checks from unemployment..."I'll send $20 here to keep them off my back for another month, I'll send $100 here...$75 for food, yeah, yeah...yeah I can do that...that'll work..."
For me, the economy is still The issue.
I don't know about you, but I'm not out of the woods yet. Muskegon isn't. Michigan isn't. Most of the Great Lakes states aren't. California isn't.
The next round of stimulus I expect...the next round I EXPECT is a health reform bill that pushes me closer to land...that doesn't have me sinking and grabbing at flotsam and jetsom to keep my head above water.