... but, here's what's going through my mind, and what I just sent to my Main (Wo)man:
Dear [My Senator]:
There is an old Chinese saying that, when spoken, does not conjure any horrible or fearful images; it seems more a benevolent blessing than a curse: "May you live in interesting times."
How nefarious a saying could that be, "May you live in interesting times"?
How bad could living in interesting times be? It’s not as if you and I want to live in uninteresting times. Interesting times are, well, interesting.
What could be so bad? Especially if you live long enough to gain "Wisdom" with your years, through those "interesting" times?
Well dear Senator, we are living in "interesting times," and I have found that being an older white male in America, right now, isn't everything it's cracked up to be.
If you were as old as me, with your own racial heritage, and male, and out of a job, you'd discover that these "interesting times" are a bitch; being out of a "good job" is always a crap-shoot, as to what comes next; especially if you are trying to raise a family, or instill values in your children, or stop a runaway government deficit because that only makes things worse, or even if you were only close to retiring from a life-long job like my wife is -- these "interesting times" are a lot to handle, what with squandered "defined payer Pensions" going to the pockets of the most recent, failed management's Chapter 7 creditors -- to banks and such "risk taker" investors and lenders -- rather than the people that have worked a lifetime paying into their pension fund in order to draw the money out when they're old and unable to get a job.
I look at where America's "surplus wealth" is being invested, and I see China (poisoned foodstuffs, fake surgical plasma and tainted toothpaste is just the first of lots of fallout from the moral and industrial corruption of THAT creditor of the United States), India (who knows?), and many National rat-holes of corruption that are the Post-Cold War discoveries of American companies, searching for an 'economic' "basis of trade" in their new, "free market" Global Economy.
"Wisdom" ain't in it, if you can guess as to my disorientation.
Just making a living wage is difficult in Wal-Mart-Land, today, between the Hudson and the Big Waves of the Pacific, believe me.
Even for a blessed Old White Male, here in the Rest of America.
That previous bit, "just making a living wage is difficult," pretty much sums up my dilemma, as a male, 56-year-old, laid-off, made "redundant" (bless Maggie Thatcher's 'Queen's English' for finding a neutered term for "totally fucked") ... a "Middle- to Upper Management" type, too old to have "prospects."
A dilemma it is!
...
My last job was as a Vice President of Communications of a newly-minted Public Company that crashed & burned with "irrational exhuberence." "Communications" was the least needed paycheck before the whole company came down, and, now ...
... Now, I'm making a "wage" as a "Temporary Worker" fixing cash registers, to only draw the ends of my over-stretched living closer -- not nearly making the ends 'meet!' (Every day I work at this job, I go deeper in debt, and my future looks bleaker.)
Barbara [my dear Senator], my present occupation doesn't pay for my living, much less allow me to send to college my indolent, "willing to work for food" kids that those that pay me must depend upon my being able to do, if I'm to sire and educate children to work for THEIR children.
I wonder: If the "Truly Wealthy" Americans don't wish me to reproduce their workforce for them and be able to pay for their education, where is America's future workforce coming from? What "workers" are the children that inherit the Business of America (without paying Estate Taxes on the transfer of wealth down to our next Trust Fund Baby President) going to hire? American kids?
I don't think so.
Obviously, our richest and most fortunate inheritors of America's wealth will look to a future workforce that isn't coming from MY household, here in Southern California, born-&-reared America. Whither do our Captains of Industry see their future (low paid) workforce coming from? Not Los Angeles? Not California? Not America?
Where, then?
Must we create a Sub-Class of low wage workers -- Marx called them the "Lumpenproletariat," back in the days of Revolution, circa 1848 -- and must we let the Republicans sail their tax-protected, inherited wealth, forevermore into the future of my Nation?
These ARE "interesting times" for a father, an older worker in America, to be living in, doncha think?
It's kinda like I've got to become one of those Fathers that grabbed a musket and ran down to the bridge in Lexington, or something. Stand up and shoot something, just 'cause an alien power was taking something away from me.
Doncha think? Have you a thought for America's future, economically? ...It isn't all about being able to pay an illegal Mexican less than you'd pay your neighbor's kid to mow your lawn, you know, Senator.
Please get back to me and let me know that you don't want to create a permanent Underclass of impoverished workers -- Marx's "Lumpenproletariat" and today's Republican "WunderMexican" -- with an Immigration Bill that'll give the Bushies a flood of cheap labor from Mexico, India, China, or wherever Fast Track Trade Deal or Immigration Omnibus Law that comes across your desk, and ruins my kid's chances of having a better living than me.
I would like to have my kids have a better time of it than I've had, trying to keep up with my own father's Post WWII Generation's largesse. But, I find that both me and the wife are having to take pay-cuts in order to "keep American business competitive."
Really? Is that really the best we can do? Lose our pensions, give back our healthcare? To keep "American Business" competitive?
Please get back to me on this, if you have the time.
Thank you,
Tempo