Bailout Blog

I’m writing this because I am so angry about the economic meltdown, and I’m not even sure who to be angry with. In fact, I’m on the low end of the economic scale, so I have much less to lose than many others. Yet I find myself irritated that “those in charge” (who?) allowed the situation to deteriorate to this point.

Let me be the first to tell you that I have very little understanding of high finance. I’ve never had much money, so I’ve had little need to learn such things. But even I knew something was wrong. A year or so ago, a friend who works in real estate was telling me that I should buy a house. This woman knows my financial condition. I told her she was crazy. “Oh no, no,’ she said, “You can get a house. All you need is a few thousand dollars for the down payment.” She was serious. I shrugged it off. Common sense told me that was ludicrous. Common sense told me that I can’t afford a house. Common sense told me that I can’t get something for nothing.

Apparently, though, common sense is not much valued in high finance. Apparently, banks were kiting home loans left and right for just about anybody, regardless of whether or not they could afford the loans. Apparently, the American Dream is made of smoke and mirrors and financial gobbeldy-gook.

So why am I so ticked off? I don’t rightly know . . . I’m not going to lose a home or a job or any money in investments. I’ll probably survive this much better than some others. I have years of experience in living on nothing.

I guess it’s the sense of betrayal, once again, by those charged with leading our country. The sense that no matter how hard an individual tries to do the right thing in life, it will always be overwhelmed by the corruption and greed of the powerful. Money and power mean everything, everything, to these people. To be honest, I don’t even consider them people. The only thing that separates humans from animals is our sense of compassion. If you don’t have that, then you’re an animal, no matter how many pretty lies pass your lips.

When I boot up the computer now, I no longer log on to the local news first. I go directly to the national sites to see if we still exist as a functioning nation. And while there, I scan the links that show the presidential election campaigns are now just name calling, a tactic I first perfected in grade school. Those two yahoos might as well be on the Journal Times site, slinging crap at each other. This is who will lead us out of the current crisis? This is who will lead us into the future? This is who we are supposed to look up to?

For the first time in my adult life, I am considering not voting in a national election. I really think it doesn’t matter. Politicians are all pigs, only in it for themselves and their friends. They will lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie, and then lie some more. I’m tired of my vote ratifying their lies. I am tired of electing monsters who screw over every working person in order to line the overstuffed pockets of their cronies. I am tired of watching this country swirl ever closer to the bottom of the toilet while connected predators get richer and richer. The thin veneer of civilization has been ripped off by the economic crisis, exposing the rotted timbers underneath and the greedy termites gnawing away at everything we work for.

And the solution is to put more termites in charge? Yeah, right . . . .