CSotD: No answer came
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Jeffrey Koterba hits the nail on the head. Any grandfather who is primarily worried about what Social Security will be like in 50 or 60 years simply isn't paying attention.
I do wish the headlines on that paper weren't solely about the economy, because that's not all of it, though our grandkids will have to figure out a way to get from here to there and paying their bills will be part of the overall puzzle.
But economies rise and fall, and, by the time today's nine-year-olds have to support themselves, the economy will be back on track in some form or another. A friend still digging out of the wreckage from Irene says she's sick of hearing about "the new normal," but this is a little different, because there will be a genuinely "new normal" in 15 years or so and the kids will evolve into whatever people do for jobs and to get by.
For the rest of what we're doing, it's hard to project a breaking point: At what stage does it all crescendo into something that will then implode and require massive change?
It is not politically correct to draw a certain historical parallel, and, if you think "political correctness" is purely a liberal obsession, again, you're not paying attention.
We've got a whole bloc of voters who break into tears if someone says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," and the Jesus they follow as lord and savior is the triumphant, vengeful messiah, the beloved of that memorable chap who wrote to Abbie Hoffman, "Just wait until Jesus gets his hands on you, you little bastard."
Not the liberal Jesus of the Bible who muddied up his theology with situational ethics and hypothetical, irrelevant parables about mercy and charity. No, Christmas is the birthday of the politically correct, incorruptible Jesus.
And so it is politically incorrect to wish someone Happy Holidays, just as it was politically incorrect three years ago for a presidential candidate to say that, in tough economic times, blue collar folks take a great deal of comfort in their religion and that, when they feel they can't control what's going on around them in the economy and the greater world, they get some solace out of a sense that, if all else fails, the Second Amendment will at least let them defend the last ditch of their own town.
And now it's even politically incorrect for a liberal candidate to set up a website that asks people to send in rumors they've heard so that the campaign can provide them with the facts and help quell falsehoods.
Steven Colbert famously joked that "reality has a well-known liberal bias," but now truth has actually become suspect.
It's apparently only bothersome, these days, to socialist liberals when the crowd at a debate shouts for sick people without insurance to die — there's nothing politically incorrect today about wishing death upon the less fortunate because, after all, they are also the less deserving.
But we are not without taboos, and, in the current climate, the unbreakable rule of Political Correctness is that you may not draw parallels with a certain time in 20th century history when a faltering economy drove people to feel so insecure that they fell in line with thugs who demonized some elements of society while encouraging the worst instincts of others.
"What did you do in the war, Daddy?" is not the question I fear. Hell, any damn fool can become a hero once it's gotten to that stage.
No, it's "Why didn't you do something when you saw what they were doing, Grandpa?" that will haunt my generation.
Couldn't find a decent video of this William Butler Yeats/Joni Mitchell mashup, but click on it anyway. The visuals will come to you:
5 – Slouching Towards Bethlehem
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