Summertime Blues

I'm sitting at home on a possibly stormy summer Friday. I am sending out my resume, hoping to get a new teaching assignment. The jobs report says only 18,000 new jobs were created in June. 40,000 public employees were let go last month. The last NASA space shuttle launch is on C-Span. A new Michelle Bachmann clip has her screeching about saying NO to raising the debt ceiling for any reason.

I think the saddest part is the ending of the space program. In the WSJ yesterday there was an article about cutting the funding for the Webb space telescope. While I am fully aware of the dark side of Manifest Destiny, the gutting of man's exploration of space feels like the shutting down of the new frontier.

In this plutocracy, where the top hedge fund managers are able to block any attempt to plug tax loopholes, where we are looking at millions upon millions permanently unemployed, where the prevailing political mood is to cut domestic programs, where the population flees toward nonstop entertainment in order not to face reality, the only option seems to entertain ourselves to death, to extinction.