May 29, 2010, Top killjoy
Well, I'm as disappointed as anyone that the "top kill" procedure of simply pumping in mud and concrete to try to gunk up the hole causing the oil mega-leak in the Gulf of Mexico... well, "top-kill apparently didn't work." But then... what is it we can do?
We can consume things, to the point of having tens of millions of morbidly obese people and literally an entertainment program devoted to such people trying to lose weight! We don't seem good at having, say, created private sector wages. And we can't seem to rebuild New Orleans or the World Trade Center in any kind of "real-time", let alone .defeat irregular insurgencies in Asia, win a "war on drugs", or for that matter, apparently, control our Southern border. I could go on with infrastructure failure, health spending inefficiencies to the point of insanity, and a failed educational system that has given us some of the stupidest people in the industrial world, while we continue to worship unbridled capitalism as if it actually works for anyone other than the nation's owners in the kazillionaire class. I don't think that, collectively, anyway, we can do much of anything anymore,
Folks, I'm growing vegetables on my urban roof: I urge you all to do the same. Faith that our system will continue even to be able to consistently deliver food seems, well... it seems like just "faith." Nothing works anymore: we have spent decades de-industrializing, denaturing the quality of everything... we just have to resign ourselves to the point of simply saying that, like the Gulf mega-spill, sure, BP is a bunch of liars and criminals and its management should certainly be indicted for murder, and then, hopefully, tried and executed (as if any of that would ever happen!!!)... but in terms of cleaning up the mess... we have no reason to believe that those involved aren't trying their best...and that's the problem: our best just isn't good enough anymore. I feel bad that the President's daughter is asking him if he's filled the hole yet. Dearie, your Dad is the President of a country that can't shoot straight: it's not his fault-- he just got here. Indeed, the fact that a guy who himself has not managed to do anything with his own life other than self-promotion has risen to such a position of leadership is almost the perfect paradigm. The strivers were really good at climbing the ladders without delivering value. Congrats: you've arrived. And the rest of us, counting on you for basic competence... are screwed. That's it. We're just screwed.
We're not good enough at anything anymore. We have seen insane resume-inflation... to get into your average Ivy League college, you need a 4.0 average, perfect college boards, published peer-reviewed research, several varsity letters, volunteer work,... and then you might have a shot... and yet, those who "make the grade" don't seem up to, well... much of anything. Other than making insane amounts of money for little or nothing of value, while working on Wall Street sucking money out of our economy for... nothing of value. Ditto the health insurance, or defense sectors, or so many of our most successful ."businesses."
Of course, our rapid race toward total mediocrity and failure happens amidst a broader environmental and climate catastrophe that, being stupid, many of us won't even recognize, and of course, while the easy oil runs out (forcing us to insanely drill in water so deep that when anything goes wrong, we have no hope of fixing it before environmental catastrophe sets in). And at a time when our citizenry is so stupid (see above) that the mere mention of the word "terrorism" leads to a mental collapse to the point of tolerating totalitarianism, because.. well, we have to be kept "safe."
So... my advice to you all... is to look out for yourselves. Think about how you'll eat and drink amidst power failures and... broader economic and political failure. How you'll get around... where you'll live and so forth. Do you really want to be 40 miles from a city center dependent on an SUV, when gasoline will be $15/gallon if attainable at all? Just saying...
This has ben... "Top killjoy."
Update: What Dmitri said.