A heck of a weekend

Well, it’s been a heck of a weekend so far. I don’t think there’s anyone not thinking about all those families in Oslo who have lost kids. In many ways life has become an exercise in seeing how much pain and suffering we can be exposed to on a fairly consistent basis. It would be wise of us to question the effects that this is having on us emotionally and psychically.

Add to this the death of Amy Winehouse, which while not exactly shocking, adds a cloud of gloom. But in a sense, Winehouse was like a barometer of what can happen if you cannot take the pressure of life right now — it’s really possible to think that checking out (in the diversity of ways that’s possible) is a viable option.

Meanwhile, the debate over the federal debt ceiling — until recently something so obscure hardly anyone knew it existed — has pushed the United States right to the brink of its bond rating being downgraded, and just two weeks away from default on past obligations. Most of what the United States raises by borrowing pays for the interest on what it has borrowed in the past, to pay for things like nuclear weapons systems, wars, tax cuts for the rich and drug benefit programs that nourish the elderly with chemical medications and enrich big pharma.

It shows you where we’re at to have the discussion be about whether to cut programs that people have already paid for their whole lives, or further enrich those who are already the most successful. We tolerate being told that “the American people don’t want to tax job creators” — as if the ultra wealthy go around giving their money away, or for that matter making jobs; if giving tax breaks for the ultra wealthy has NOT done one thing, that would be create jobs.

The real deficit is compassion — or you could say that we face an inability to express rage where it belongs: the ongoing ripoff of human energy, which is being harvested by entities that in no way enhance our lives. You could say that the U.S. in particular has a political problem in that so many people are either ignorant of political process or so repulsed by it they have vowed never to learn; or you could say that we’ve lost our bearing on the purpose of society itself, which is to get together as a tribe and figure out how to help everyone.

I was emailing with Tracy, editor of Serennu.com, this morning about the differences in social values in the U.S. and the U.K. She pointed out that part of why the phone hacking could go on as long as it did, involving so many different newspapers, was that it was mainly directed at the rich and famous, who many Brits seem to hold in some level of contempt. In the U.S., we tend hold those who are less fortunate than ourselves in contempt.