An Interesting Time

These are great days my friends, or at least very interesting. The economic troubles make me wonder if our country and the world might finally come to grasp with the fact that the industrial revolution has forever changed the face of society, rugged individualism no longer works. No one lives self-sustained in a cabin in the woods anymore. The days of the skilled craftsman working from his home/shop is gone as well. Even the family farm is almost gone. Society like everything else has evolved, unfortunately the industrial revolution means that we need fewer people to do the same amount of work. That leaves people without meaningful employment. The medical revolution means that people don't die so much anymore and so we have way way more people than the world can sustain, but thats not a topic I'm going to cover this time. I just think it's very important that as a people we realize that some of our old ideals are fantastic and need to be cherished, but others ideals are simply not realistic anymore. We need to get rid of these 19th century notions that hard work is all thats needed to prosper. Toss aside the silly idea that free markets solve all problems. I really hope that this failure will finally let people understand that modern business alone has a terrible secret, without the help of the government it cannot survive, your tax dollars prop up companies, not just under the bailout but always. We've had minor amounts of socialism since at least the 1830's Clay's American System (history class sorry) so people just need to shut the fuck up about it being unamerican. My hope is that we will realize that socialism isn't evil, its also not a complete picture, we need to take the best of socialism and the best of capitalism and create a functional system.

Ok I swear I'm going to get to my point!

Another reason it's an interesting time to be alive is this fuckin' election. Can you believe that we're actually going to have a black president? Which reminds me, of a shirt I want, "I was going to vote for Obama, till I heard he was half white." Which brings me to racism. What other time than now could you possibly hear this story?

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

I honestly am not sure how to respond. Assuming it's true, and that the people really are planning on voting for Obama it's a pretty crazy story. I'm glossing over the fact that the woman asks her husband who she is voting for because thats a whole other mess that I don't feel like getting into, but I really think that within my generation there are very few who don't put men and women as equals. So what's my point? Well quite simply that the world has suddenly become an interesting place again. I think that we're taking huge steps towards erasing racism and sexism, not in the ways that our parents did in the sixty's by taking to the streets but by living in a post 60's world where men and women of all colors are quite simply treated the same. My parents generation have to consciously push racism out of their lives, my generation was raised by people who didn't want to be racist, thats quite an advantage. I look at my town, actually it was a friend of a friend who really drove this home, he started rattling off the names of all the kids he knew, then finishes with and they're all mixed. We ain't gunna have racism because there aren't gunna to be any race's left! The world is changing around us, not by force like it need to be done initially, now were simply swept up in the currents that are slowly moving us towards what I'm hopeful to think is going to be a brighter future. I'm not so idealistic as to think that we might not flow over a few waterfalls along the way with this economic shit but if thats what it's going to take to save us then so be it. I look forward to what tomorrow brings.... Oh wait no I don't I have a history test tomorrow. Clay's American System! Woo!