Monday, July 4, 2011

Built a Ferris Wheel in My Mind, Bolt by Bolt, Then It Broke Just as It Spun Me to the Top

I'm a third of the way though Jeff Madrick's Age of Greed. I read that review then saw the book on the new book shelf, picked it up. So far it's a who's who of motherfucking pigs who've devoted their lives to revoking all laws that keep world class assholes from ratfucking their way to unlimited wealth, starting with motherfucking Hayek. You and me worry about freedom from. World class assholes worry about freedom to.






My friend L of Thursday Night Pints is a generation older than me, she's seventy-four now. I've written before how the Progressive apostasy towards Team Democrat in general and Obamadick in particular radiates out in ripples from the younger to the older. L remembers the fights for Civil Rights and Women's Rights, she remembers when all the safety nets and consumer protections the assholes in Madrick's book want to eliminate didn't exist or had only just been won.






The top two and below photos are from yesterday's hike, a sweet little three mile loop just over the American Legion, Scott's Run Park immediately off the beltway on VA 193. I can't go into details but Earthgirl and I have had another week of a child-free home as we prepare for this Fall, so we're taking to the woods again, getting our hiking legs back under us so we can occupy our weekends with long circuits and decent day through-hikes. We also both assume there's no way we'll be able to retire when we hoped, that the pensions we've paid into will be lost, the money we've contributed into 401Ks each paycheck the past twenty years doesn't really exist, and that health insurance as we now know it won't exist by the time we get old and start to die, so dropping some pounds each seems a prudent step for our future in first British then Serbian America.






Sue us, we're maudlin. Unlike you youngsters we remember when it was stupid and roobish but wasn't motherfucking quaint to think incremental ticks on a progressive ratchet were not only possible but inevitable by dint of reality in negotiations between assholes and their herds. We were young, dopes.













MAN OF THE HOUSE


Bill Hicok

It was a misunderstanding.
I got into bed, made love
with the woman I found there,
called her honey, mowed the lawn,
had three children, painted
the house twice, fixed the furnace,
overcame an addiction to blue pills,
read Spinoza every night
without once meeting his God,
buried one child, ate my share
of Jell-o and meatloaf,
went away for nine hours a day
and came home hoarding my silence,
built a ferris wheel in my mind,
bolt by bolt, then it broke
just as it spun me to the top.
Turns out I live next door.



7 comments:

  1. They keep dead saints there? Looks like a swanky place to hike.

    Heh, I'm perpetually 12; Obamadick always elicits a chuckle.

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  2. Re: the banks - they should never have been allowed to combine themselves into the small number of overly powerful institutions that they are today. (This is true of many others of our megacorporations. They regulate our government, rather than the reverse.)
    ~

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  3. Krekor Ohanian as... Mannix!

    And in serious mode: does Madrick spend any time reciting the Donkeys' role in that Age of Greed, or is it a fond bit of Elephant Hunting?

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  4. So far, with the exception of noting LBJ's extension of the Vietnam War and its consequent costs, no, but he's doing it chronologically - Hayek, Walter Wriston, Milton Friedman, Nixon - and that's where I am in the book. Flipping ahead there seems to be lots in the Clinton years, which is as it should be: the Big Dog was a pig.

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  5. Thunder is correct and you are too. Big Dog was the best President the Republicans ever had in the modern era.

    I remember the 60's with fondness. We screwed a lot, had deep convo's,protested and always knew someone to bail us out of jail.

    Hell, protester's don't even get jailed anymore. They don't know how good they got it..these days.

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  6. Looks like the cat wanted to go on the hike with you!

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