A Tested Faith in American "Exceptionalism"

Since I last posted here, my wife and I have muddled along, making mortgages, making bills.  We haven't lost everything. Yet. But we have sold a car and radically altered our lifestyle. We've put off getting haircuts, entering book contests, making home improvements that might eventually let us sell a home we paid far too much for (at a market price), and even drinking coffee (if you knew my wife, you'd understand how radical that is).

Until recently, I've been preoccupied with grad school and the requisite forward-looking stance of being in a PhD program.  Now, however, we're edging closer to disaster and hence contemplating new business ventures, like continuing this blog that hasn't been updated in months, starting and building a legitimate consulting business based on our collective expertise (or just on mine . . . we'll see how it goes), as well as a handful of other potentially unwise stratagems.

In other words, our future has gotten short-term, and it's increasingly horrifying for reasons I don't fully understand.  Why the sudden shift?

Well, my wife (somehow) hasn't yet lost her health insurance, but the federal Senate has failed numerous times to extend subsidized COBRA benefits.  More, her unemployment may soon be a memory. Thanks to political grandstanding (that seems to be working).

As odd as it may sound, when the current economic crisis began, I was hopeful, expectant.  I believed that our country could reshape itself and draw on its history of noble ideas and empathy to change the fabric of our society for the better.  I believed that the USA--not because of its politicians, but because of its people--truly was an exceptional place in the world.  Increasingly, I think that my assessment was correct, but not because we have lived up to the necessities of ingenuity and empathy.  No, I now think America is remarkable because of its remarkable collective amnesia, because this is a country where 2 million people might lose the lifeline of unemployment benefits simply for the sake of politics, where the truth is a variable that shifts in relation to the election cycle, where millionaires in the Senate chamber can put lipstick on a pig and call it "reform."  I believe, I'm afraid, that what makes us exceptional is our collective apathy.

We watch our friends, our neighbors struggle and then vote for those who are aligned with the insurance companies, the banks, the media, and just sort of hope.

Come on, America, prove me wrong.  Live up to the platitudes.  Let's see how we can innovate out of oil dependency, credit derivatives, corporate fraud, and the damn lies of politic speak.  Let's afford everyone their basic human dignity, their basic rights, like access to shelter, food, and healthcare.  Let's prove ourselves.

What? No?  You have other plans.  There's a new iPhone?  You're a real American?  And, as a liberal, I'm not?

Oh well, fuck it.  Life's too short to believe in fairy tales anyhow.