I couldn't resist titling this post as if it were a country song, parentheses and all.
Let me just lay it out there: the American economy is bloated. We have been living with "It's vacation you can do what you want!" rules for the last 8-15 years. The reason poor people have flat screen TVs and diabetes is because money has been easier than a Chinese sex slave since the Dow past 8,000.
We don't need all the shit we have. Our economy has been behaving like a linebacker on steriods ever since globalization seriously took root.
We don't need 5 cell phone companies all offering the same exact thing. We don't need 27 different brands of shampoo. We don't need to suffer through automated customer service systems just so our complaints can eventually be dumped off to some irritating netherworld of pseudo-efficiency.
We don't need strip malls on every block of every highway in America. It's the same shit no matter where you go.
We need to come back to earth and start working together again.
With every American job we lose, I say to myself, "Boy if we only had those 10+million jobs we gave to illegal immigrants as we turned a blind eye, we'd be alright."
But I can't blame them or hold a grudge. They were only doing what any of us would do, what we have been taught to do... go where the money is.
Except, now there is no money. The house of cards has fallen. Maybe now our culture, preceded by our economy, can go back to a more understandable, more tangible, more authentic form.
