"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." ~FDR
The fact that someone already made these words famous means that our countries, our world has seen frightening, nerve-wracking times before. And, lived to tell about it. But, the fact that these words could apply just as equally to our time as to the one that spurred those words does not make me feel any better.
In fact, I am truly resentful and actually confused by how I feel about everything. I only know that I think it is absolutely unnecessary and wonder how we can continue to allow things to spiral so out of control.
You know I'm not an alarmist by nature. I pretty much face a day with the notion of "Sufficient unto a day it's own troubles..." I don't go borrowing angst and worry. As much as I'm pretty calm in the face of crazy, my brother Glenn, is even more calm. There are times when you want to check to make sure he has a pulse!
Last night we're on the telephone catching up and he asks, "Did you see the news story on CBS Evening News about the new community of tunnel/under bridge dwellers that has formed in Las Vegas of all places?" When I said I hadn't, he started to tell me some of the details.
It seems that so many have lost their homes, their jobs, their stuff, that they've formed communities under bridges and in tunnels for shelter. They showed a guy taking a shower by standing under the run off that comes from above when it rains. How disgusting is that? He says to me with incredulity, "What the hell is wrong with the people who are supposed to be in charge of the United States that they would let this country come to this!?"
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! I was shocked by that story. Not because I'm clueless about the homeless people in our country. I did, after all, grow up in a major metropolitan city. Yes, homeless people are part of the background of life and an ongoing problem. But, in Las Vegas? Really?! "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," now takes on a completely new and disturbing aspect!
I countered with the Atlanta story that has me concerned, where so many people waited in a parking lot just to get the APPLICATIONS for Section 8 Housing, that the crowd turned violent. There were people waiting in that parking lot who had traveled from Alabama, Kentucky, and Tennessee! REALLY? Just for the application, just to get the paper work, to HOPE that they might end up with a place to live. Getting into fights over the hopes of living in shit-box Section 8 Housing!!!
This is another one of my open ended blogs. Because, first of all, I can't get my head around the desperate measures and times we are finding ourselves. It's not just the U.S.; it's almost a global epidemic! And, secondly, because I have absolutely no idea how this is going to turn out or what can be done to course correct. I want to do something about this but I don't have a clue as to what that might be...
For me, what has my mind chasing in circles is the extremes of the spectrum I keep reading about. The increasingly clear differences between the haves and the 'sucks to be yous'. It's not the facts of any of these stories per se, it's more about what I'm afraid they're illustrating.
For instance, as far as I'm concerned, it's not about the First Lady recently taking a plane to SPAIN that we payed for as tax payers...a plane holding all the Secret Service etc, that must go with her when she travels. She has a right to vacation and take her daughter there. She has the right to have her friends all stay in the suites she reserved in the luxury hotel of her choosing.
She and her husband are millionaires. Did you know that? Yeah. They are. They don't breathe the same air as the majority of us. She doesn't have to. And, because she has that sort of money and life style, she has the privilege to spend her vacation as she wants. Where she wants. With whom she wishes to share it. But, can she really be that insensitive and uncaring? Or, am I expecting too much of her?
Someone in an OpEd compared her behavior to that of Marie Antoinette. And, I say shame on them! Because Marie Antoinette never said, "Let them eat cake," when the French peasants were starving. No, that was the Queen two queens before her, the wife of Louis the XIV who said such a inflammatory thing. Marie was actually a pretty caring Queen and did a great deal of good works...her major flaw was she didn't have me as her PR person.
Even though Marie didn't say that line, it's pretty clear what the writer meant by that comparison. I can't say that I can argue against it. Sure, she paid for the vacation, but the very steep transportation to SPAIN, (did I tell you she spent her money in SPAIN?) Well, that we didn't need to take on right now...
I point that story out because it's almost like something from Dickens...isn't it? It was the best of times; it was the worst of times... A 21st century version of a Tale of Two Cities.
The divide between all of us as individuals seems to be turning into a chasm that is likely to swallow up the world as we know it. I'm not sure that it can survive if it keeps on this path. Actually, with each day that passes, I'm becoming more certain that it won't survive.
The First Lady of the United States, aka Michelle Obama, went to Spain with friends on her vacation, while a man in Las Vegas stands in the run off from the road above to keep clean. And, my head can't make those two extremes come into focus as being acceptable.
I am generally hopeful and trust in the rightness of things as they are in the moment that they are...but I swear to you...I feel trouble, cataclysmic trouble heading our way. And, I don't know what we can do to stop it before it slams into us. Indeed it is the best of times and the worst of times. Only to get worse and worse before it can ever get better.
That's all I got for now.
Namaste' Till Next Time,
Holly aka She Who Is Afraid
Clearly, I was mistaken. It's back in the wilting 90's again. Will stay that way for the entire week. Red sky at morning? Ask a sailor what that means...
