Sad State of Affairs

Children show us our limitations and weaknesses, hone in our Achilles Heel and exploit it for all its worth. My pair of offspring get me every time. I can be as calm as a Zen master, right up to the moment they start screaming at one another over something trivial. Miranda, darling daughter, is as cute and as headstrong as they come, and when she gets into a frothing tantrum her endurance is incredible. A week ago she set an American record for an in-the-car tantrum. She was wailing when we left Lake Cachuma and still wailing with the same intensity when we pulled into the driveway here at Hacienda Milpas. By then my nerves were frazzled and my brain felt like it was trapped in a pinball machine, and I had forgotten what got the child so riled up in the first place. My patience was shot, my reservoir of kindness was bone dry, and once again I felt whipped.

Been reading about the mess in Iraq, how the country is teetering on the brink of civil war, and how Bush & Co. continue to declare that things are progressing fine, right on schedule; the fact that Sunnis and Shiites are at each other’s throats is just a blip on the radar screen. Sure, and Dick Cheney is a crack shot and a stand-up guy. Christ, how dumb can our leaders be? Civil war was the only possible outcome of the US invasion/occupation. The genie shot out of the bottle the minute we toppled Saddam. Minus the iron control enforced for decades by Saddam’s thugs, Iraq’s ethnic and religious enmities and hatreds were destined to bubble over. The question was never If – the question was When. A lot of bright people warned Bush & Co. that toppling Saddam would be a cakewalk compared with governing Iraq afterwards. Of course, the warmongers in the White House paid no attention to anyone who knew what they were talking about.

Here’s something to think about: the last time Congress raised the Federal minimum wage was back in 1997. Since then, Congress has raised its own salaries seven or eight times. Who’s working for whom? And Congress members have a cool package of health insurance benefits, too.

And W is in India, inflicting himself on that poor but up and coming nation. And why not, since India is a prime outsourcing spot for American CEO’s determined to improve the corporate bottom line at any cost. Let’s lift poor Indians while pushing American workers to the bottom of the economic heap. At any other time, such national policy would be excoriated, but this is the time of Bush so it makes perfect sense.

I wonder if Americans are suffering from “scandal fatigue.” Iraq, Katrina, rampant cronyism, Cheney’s hunting mishap, and all the rest. As the media brings the sanitized versions to our attention, as the talking heads on Fox spin the truth around on its ear, as the White House spokesperson shrugs and says, “We did nothing wrong,” the American public sighs, shakes its collective head and switches over to Dancing with the Stars or Lost. It’s like, “Oh, Bush and his team lied again, cheated again, rigged the game for their cronies again. So what’s new? Honey, what’s for dinner?”

Sad state of affairs.