Occasionally now I have to drive downtown to the Big City for business meetings. This is a new experience for me; I grew up in the affluent, surrounding suburbs and, although my parents had grown up in it, as the decay and corruption and resulting lawlessness began to outpace its growth, even their parents moved away and eventually none of us bothered to venture there except very rarely for perhaps some entertainment purpose.
So while it is not really unfamiliar, I am finding every trip now made in broad daylight to be very disconcerting.
I am struck as much by the crumbling, boarded-up elegance of what was once a city thriving and obviously full of pride as I am by the shabby, hollow-eyed people who still live there. The main thoroughfare, once sporting simple yet elegant apartment buildings and solid, warm, welcoming places of worship, as well as merchants of every stripe, has been replaced by liquor stores, hair and nail salons, and check-cashing businesses; this monotony of an area gripped by poverty occasionally broken by a run-down eating establishment or police precinct. Oh sure, there are the stereotypical sporting and convention arenas, a theater district, and a pretense of big businesses still waving the flag but for all the circumspect pockets of dubious productivity, the air reeks with a heavy, deject sense of despair. It is all very much like Norma Desmond, that famous recluse of Sunset Boulevard fame; wanting desperately to be remembered and perhaps wanting even more to find she is still useful.
Struggling with the economic fallout as much as anyone, it is easier now for me to understand the disparities that have allowed the silver-tongued devil and his fascist minions to continue to hold their snake-charmer sway through the decietful ugliness that has marked their first month in office. Should those who live in the Big City wish to stay there, the truth is that there is very little that is truly meaningful or even really very useful for them to pursue. Unskilled, they live at the mercy of the government handout either through welfare checks or government jobs; unmotivated, they squander that handout on things that only serve to dull the instinctual feelings they are perceived as somehow childlike and unworthy.
It is a false pride and an ignorant pride that scrawls graffiti across the historic buildings and hurls rocks through the windows of the long-vacant factories that once furnished the world with much-needed goods. And it is to this false and ignorant pride that the stimulus bill panders; it is clear to me that there will be no real jobs created in this Big City. As I continue to drive through its downtown I will continue to pause for the lost and aimless who literally wander in its streets. I will watch with an angry grief as the last of the old, grand “ladies” show us more and more of their weather-damaged goods as they crumble from neglect, if they do not first succumb to an arsonist’s match.
My eyes will not look away as I pass through, though those who can somehow still afford wants on top of needs will pay no heed as they go to ball games or plays or gamble in the casinos; as long as they are benefiting in some way from the promises of this false messiah they will turn a blind eye to those who believe but were never intended to share in them.
I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an advocate of socialism. I fervently believe in the American Dream; that working hard, working honestly and providing impeccible goods or services can allow anyone to live comfortably. Comfort is, of course, rather subjective, but decent food on the table, a solid roof overhead, and pride in a job well done at the end of the day shouldn’t be this hard to come by.
I believe that we, America, can do better – indeed, we must do better than this “let ’em eat pork” stench wafting from the Orchid Office. Americans don’t need more pork, what we need is a market that is free from what is at best misguided manipulation and certainly one free of the slings and arrows of thinly-veiled greed. We need real truth in reporting (here is but one example; seems a little late in coming, doesn’t it?) and from our elected officials (recovery.gov being right up there in the Top Ten but, of course, having failed miserably to date). If we are to buy into the need for any economic stimulus, it should not be in order to further swell the coffers of the United Nations with American dollars and thereby push the agendas of those who not-so-secretly wish to destroy us. Nor should it be used to pad the wallets of illegal immigrants (what part of “illegal” is so hard to understand once someone gets to Washington, anyway?)
I can’t help but be reminded that it is Lady Justice who is blindfolded. Not Lady Liberty.
And I don’t think either of them kept their svelte figure by consuming a steady diet of pork.