The Path To Destruction: Ignoring the Plight of the People
By Chris Martin on March 2, 2009 at 5:10 PM in Current Affairs
I remember the old days, when heavy metal was considered devil music. Well, sometimes the devil music gets it right. Take the Megadeth song “Symphony of Destruction” on the left and some of the lyrics: “You take a mortal man,/ And put him in control/ Watch him become a god.”
One of the problems that I’ve had with Obama is that he reminds me a lot of Arnold Schwarzenegger and California. (I believe someone will be discussing this at some point so I won’t go into details here.) Schwarzenegger came to power as a very popular executive that too few in the CA legislature were willing to publicly challenge, particularly because of his supposed “bipartisan” governing philosophy. Unfortunately, Schwarzenegger and the willing CA legislature made some face saving decisions that didn’t address long term structural deficiencies in the state. Now CA is in some serious economic troubles.
The country is at a pivotal point in time, just like CA was in 2003-2004. Our decisions can address the economic situation in a meaningful manner or exacerbate the problems. As Salon mentions, extreme economic conditions can lead to disaster:
But another perilous consequence of the crash of 2008 has only recently made its appearance: increased civil unrest and ethnic strife. Someday, perhaps, war may follow.As people lose confidence in the ability of markets and governments to solve the global crisis, they are likely to erupt into violent protests or to assault others they deem responsible for their plight, including government officials, plant managers, landlords, immigrants and ethnic minorities.
Make sure you click on the link to find some specific examples.
This comes to mind because I recently took a look at the latest unemployment numbers. They are clearly not very good. I know some don’t always follow links, so I’ll reproduce one of the graphs here for you:
While its important to address the problems facing the financial institutions, its important not to forget about the people’s problems. There are a lot of hard working Americans without a job and who are unable to find work. I’ve heard several places that people should take what they can get, but if you’ve talked to people you’ll find that even manual labor and retail work is hard to find. I have a friend who has to layoff several people in their department for the first time since he’s been there (about 20 years). Temp agencies have an overabundance of applicants and a shortage of available work. And its likely to get much worse before it gets better.
We need to act with urgency and in a sound manner. Failing to do so, or doing what Schwarzenegger and his puppet legislature did, can lead to some very serious problems in this country.
by Ronald Scott
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