TESTS

8:30pm Thursday night.
It has been a good day.
Temperature in the low 50’s, mix of clouds and sun, and then light rain.

In came the koi before the rain started. Drained the pond and filled the tank in the bowels of The Study.

Netted the three big fellows (don’t really know the genders) and deposited them below, lovingly.

Stored away the pump and hoses and so on and refilled the pond, tossing in the requisite logs to prevent ice damage.

Breakfast had been a bit hasty, but lunch was better and dinner was superb.

Martinis and a glass of wine and a fine steak - perhaps not the best recipe for coherent writing, but there it is and here we are at just about 8:30pm.

Firstly, while mucking and cleaning the pond, it occurred that the country is probably not more culturally or politically divided now than it was under President Bush.
b.o. is not the cause of current disunity and animosity and cynicism and ignorance and confusion and on and on and on.
It started before him – before President Bush – it was developing before Ronald Reagan, that Dear Fella who did a lot to get rid of some of it. Emphasize some.
He too was the butt of jokes and insults and stupid criticism.
But no matter.

b.o. did not start it.
His crime, if you will, is that he is unable, perhaps incapable of doing anything about it.

He is the product of machine politics and is subject to the attentions of very active interest groups, groups which are not loved by much of moderate or mainstream America.

He is too much a part of one side of the cultural/political divide to be able to do any bridging.
He has grown up in it and has wallowed in it.
He is tainted by it. To this day.
He will have a devil of a time ever escaping it.

Too bad.
Too bad that he promised to be able to bring the nation together.

But then, that is what politicians do – they, or many of them, say whatever it takes to get elected.

Secondly, how about the ‘elite’ folks who are defending roman polanski (sp?)?
Elites in several walks of life they are doing it.

And to think that once there was a day, not too many years ago, when so-called educated folks denied that there were really liberals or conservatives, that everyone was really just about the same as everyone else.

I know, the definitions of lib and conservative have changed over the decades – but still.

The nature of the crime, or rather crimes, is so shocking – and the willingness to forget –
You just gotta shake your head.

Thirdly, we read this morning about the thousands, the tens of thousands of folks who turned out in Detroit for government $$ handouts to help them stay in their homes – and about how they deported themselves during the melee’.
Which brings to mind the recent Time Mag article on Detroit.
We have not read it yet – but apparently it has been discussed in the Senate of the United States and in our local papers and around many water coolers, in suburbs and urbs.
Are there still water coolers in offices??

Dear Wife asked this day what happened to Detroit.

Quick attempt at an answer [albeit incomplete]:

In the 1920’s, poor blacks moved North to work in the factories of Detroit.
Industry, especially automotive, boomed, and employment of all types flourished.

The Depression came and went, and more poor folk migrated north to work in the war plants.

The War ended.
Things seemed to be ok, but war work went away and industrial growth began to lag.

Foreign competition grew, especially in the automotive areas. And mechanical inventions encouraged southern black agricultural workers to head north as their jobs were displaced in the south.

And then the judicial system forced school bussing [sp?] on the city and middle class and affluent whites left the city in droves, leaving behind an impoverished and ever poorer population base unable to flee, unable to provide for itself.

A city with a population of millions is now reduced to 700 + thousand – no one really knows how many. Detroit has the poorest census accuracy of any major city in the United States.
No attempt to quote figures here, but the average family income of half the population of the city is – not enough to do the job.

Dear Wife asked what is to be done??

We suspect that there is no solution that can fix the problem.

We suspect that the best that can be hoped for is to suppress the most destructive factors and support the most positive, the most needy, the most helpless.
The city is beyond helping itself.

It has become a client entity, requiring control and funding and protecting from outside – and most of the citizens act as though they have no clue.

Pathetic.
As in medicine, not every illness has a cure.
Sometimes, the best we can hope for is maintenance.
Let’s here it for maintenance.
Even that would be a kind of win for Detroit.

Fourthly, the war in Afghanistan is not going well.
The Commander-in-Chief, b.o., has appointed a commander whom he apparently trusts, since he, b.o., appointed him.
b.o.’s problem is that he, b.o., is beholden to so many liberals, so many ignorant interest groups, that he cannot act on the advice of the commander without dithering and pretending to think and rethink and discuss.

It is our hope that when the rethinking charade is over that b.o. will do as his chosen commander has requested.
We are encouraged that virtually all of the Bush/Cheney national security measures loudly condemned by b.o. during the campaign have been largely validated and preserved by b.o. and company.

We are a resilient people, but we are being tested.