Okay, so it has been a while, and now all I have is a bunch of loosely related, depressing thoughts. Maybe somebody can offer some hope here. The world hasn't ended, yet.
So the recent disaster in Haiti shows how easily the barely functional countries of the third world fall apart. Here, luckily, it was just one country, but if we are unable to do anything about global warming, we should have problems of a similar magnitude across the board. And the developed countries' capacities and willingness to help, lukewarm at the best of times, will be noticeably diminished.
The chance of the United States doing anything meaningful about global warming just shrunk measurably with the Massachussetts election of Scott Brown (who, btw, for any social conservatives who may be reading this blog, posed totally naked for cosmopolitan in 1982). Even more irritating and ironic is the suggestion, probably real, that Massachusetts voters were fed up with debate on healthcare, since Massachussetts gained, under the leadership of former governor Mitt Romney, a more liberal healthcare plan than either of those being considered in congress. But, of the existing states with near universal coverage, Massachusetts plan is most like the one Congress is trying to pass, and polls suggest they are generally ok with it (slightly more in favor than against). So basically, we've got ours, but no one else should? I don't get it. Does independent mean ideologically incoherent? Winston Churchill's remarks on democracy seem particularly apt.
Also, I am reading about East Asian societies that basically imploded while rival factions in government kept anyone from instituting the meaningful changes. Even without the perfect hindsight of history, there were contemporaries who knew what needed to be done, but were prevented from doing it by conservative faction who were unable to do offer any constructive solutions to these problems, but just criticized and stymied those attempting reform. Tens of millions of people died.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
The MA thing totally pissed me off. When we lived there we got checks from the government to help pay for our Health Insurance because we didn't make enough even though I had mine through school, Chris had his through his job. It was awesome. health care there rocks and I was really hoping that we could get some of that good fortune here in CA.
I just spend 2 hours talking to a social worker about Food Stamps. They FINALLY took off that stupid requirement of having less than $2000 in the bank. There is some good news. The bad news is that the money that doesn't get spend on food stamps goes to this utter black hole...anyway he was enplaning it to me and it was way depressing.
by the way how did your job interview go?
Yeah, how did your interview go?
I hope that this funk has nothing to do with that.
I'm not really willing to just blame conservatives across the board, yet. We should get Iz in on this conversation, because he's someone who I respect and is conservative (notice I didn't say 'but'). I know he has some opinions on the healthcare stuff.
I think it's too early to despair. I think the willingness to aid Haiti at this time is a good sign, considering our own economic "troubles" (I say this as one of the richest 10% of the world-- but I'm serious about the fact that we complain about it anyway)and the stuff we need to do about global warming is going to take a long time. Really this has been a short time that we've even been seriously considering it in our society, in the scope of things. Keep up your fight.
I find the Ma. vote depressing and our lack of williingness to change our habits to improve the environment. I want to do better. On a personal level, I feel sure you will get opportunities to use your talent and education, for what's that worth. I have great faith in you and in Heavenly Father's desire to do good through you. As Mike said, "There is still much good that will come through this family." Love you. Mom
I didn't know until recently that Churchill was against socializing medicine in England like it is today..Robby and I don't have insurance. Orange County is extremely conservative and I got super annoyed after this last election. The only thing that made me feel better, was knowing that I could do things on my own for the environment. Think of all the people you meet that see how you live...a lot.
Post a Comment