It's truly disorienting to live in a culture that you don't 'get'. They tell me that Bush's approval ratings are 90 plus percent. But no one ever asks me or anyone I know. They tell me about varying unemployment rates or health coverage percentages but, again, I don't think those figures have ever included the people I know. I thought when Bush was elected that the world was going to hell in a handbasket, and now that emergency-mode has handed him a mandate for the next three-plus years, I see potential and signs of irrevocable damage. Creepy alliances and indiscriminate promises of aid, erosions of civil rights, spree-spending packages without real thought to budgeting or long-range consequences, and all 'sacrifice' being borne by the same people who always sacrifice; the working poor, recent immigrants, the children of poor school districts (of course, we'll be testing them a lot and pulling funding from those schools for poor performance, calling it 'educational reform'). Very disturbing stuff, but even more disturbing is the public's lack of outcry. Does no one see the world as I do? Is no one paying attention? Or do my values have so little in common with my age that I can't even function in this society?
Some critical writing: stimulus package critique. The Observer's war on terror op-ed essays. Herbert -- Shame in the House.
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