Tuesday, September 16, 2008

And Now Let Us Thank the 80's

Ok, two posts in one day is a little ridiculous, but I was listening to NPR this morning and could not resist posting again.

The piece was discussing how the "me, me, me" 80's and the Reagan hysteria was really the beginning of what led to yesterday's historic fall on Wall Street. Now I am neither an economist nor a mathematician, but I do know that Jimmy Carter in the late 70's was busy encouraging us to conserve, to not be materialistic and to plan for our future.

Guess what? People decided to elect Reagan whose views of living for the moment and gaining as much stuff as we could likely reflected his age more than anything else (as in, hell, I am going to die before any of this shite comes home to roost so I am all about living for today). Jimmy Carter was right, people. Thirty years ago. I believe that history proves again and again that the Dems are right and the Repubs are wrong, but my fellow countrymen (all the Rhodes scholars they are) are neither students of history nor forward thinkers. And we are going to pay the price. We are going to pay the price of our lack of forethought big time.

I remember the night Reagan was elected for the second time. I walked into my parent's bedroom and my mother was crying. "I just worry about your future in this country," she told me. At the time, I was 7 and was more concerned with swing sets than swing voters, but she was right to worry. She was not being dramatic. Because 23 years later, my generation is paying the price for the excesses of the 80's. And now we have a chance to make it right, to help fix this country and 50 percent of us are considering voting for Old Man River and his (vastly underqualified, frighteningly unaware) hockey mom "everywoman" running mate. This is so scary and I promise each and every person reading these words that 23 years from now, if McCain is elected we will rue the day.

If history teaches us nothing, then we are bound to repeat it. G-d help us.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Never before have I been so frightened about the outcome of an election . . .

Unknown said...

Amen.

Kristi said...

Damn straight (but not straight talk) ;)