America, America! Something’s happenin’ here. What it is ain’t exactly clear. (For what it’s worth, sounds like a good song lyric…)
Last week I heard an interesting statistic: 50% of Americans think their future will NOT be better—that our best days in America are behind us.
That’s disturbing. First because I think negative thinking is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And second, it’s the opposite of the American spirit: our ‘sunny optimism.’
But I totally understand it. The events of the last two years have been devastating—the financial meltdown, the cast of corrupt business and political leaders, the decimation of the environment, the cost of Louboutin shoes—it’s enough to make any Pollyanna grumpy.
I think in 2011 we are at a crossroads:
One direction we can take is a U-turn, back towards the ideals that made this country great in the first place: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and an honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work for every person who wants to work—without the intrusion of the government.
The second direction is headed down a dark murky road that dead-ends in a giant abyss where average Americans (the 98% of the non-filthy-rich) are dumped by the wayside and the other 2% are oblivious to the morass they have created.
How do we turn this Doom Ship Lollipop around? The people have to BELIEVE in AMERICA again—and demand better.
That is a tall order. Especially since 2011 is not starting out in the right direction. So far this year:
1. Outgoing CA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger commutes the sentence of a felon (convicted as an accomplice in the stabbing murder of a college student)—because the criminal is the son of a political ally. Disgusting.
2. Goldman Sucks and a Russian corporation (too close to call on which is worse) buy 1% of FaceBook for $500 million, which essentially values a digital high school yearbook (in design and mentality) at $50 billion dollars. Which proves the theory that almost everyone wants to relive High School and make it better—and then maybe their lives will be better now.
3. In Arizona, a deranged gunman kills six people, wounds fourteen, including putting a bullet in the head of a U.S. Congresswoman at a public rally in a shopping mall. Geez, this is so off-the-rails horrifying it’s hard to respond. Saying something like, ‘Try the ballot box, not a gun‘ seems so inadequate.
4. Kim Kardashian is paid $10,000 per tweet (140 characters or less) for making a personal endorsement on Twitter. If companies are stupid enough to pay Ms. Kardashian this kind of money for a few sentences, good for her. The scary part: the Americans who care what Ms. Kardashian has to say.
5. Thousands of birds fall from the sky in Arkansas. Is the sky next? Is somebody trying to tell us something? (And it isn’t that it’s time for another Hitchcock movie…)
Come on, America. We can do better.
