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Utopian Turtletop. Monsieur Croche's Bête Noire. Contact: turtletop [at] hotmail [dot] com
Thursday, August 02, 2007
The illegal 4th of July parade down my mother's lane in rural Michigan, July 4, 2007. My son is in the dark blue T-shirt.
* * * * *
Near the end of Clinton’s presidency, the national debt was $5.7 trillion and heading downward.
Bush reversed course.
The Outstanding Public Debt as of 03 Aug 2007 at 05:34:22 AM GMT is: $8,915,206,223,265.40. The estimated population of the United States is 302,602,147, so each citizen's share of this debt is $29,461.80.
Bush added $3.215 trillion to the national debt.
Which works out to be $10,624.51 per person.
My son was born during the Bush administration. Thanks to Republican policies, he has $10,624.51 of new debt.
Call it Bush’s Birth Tax. Born indebted.
* * * * *
The bridge in Minnesota collapsed. Partisans blame Republican tax cutting, but Democrats have neglected the infrastructure too.
My heart goes out to people who have lost family members and friends.
* * * * *
It’s parade season. We took the kid to a parade Sunday evening. Most of the music was old -- ‘60s and ‘70s rock and funk and pop mostly. The Masons’ float blasted “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang.
“I didn’t know Kool and the Gang were Masons!”
“It’s a secret society, dear,” said my beloved spouse. “You never know who’s in it.”
I liked hearing the Chinese marching band playing Chinese brass-band music. At the parade the week before, the Shriners dressed as Bedouins and playing “It’s a Small World After All” on Middle Eastern reed instruments and drums had been a highlight.
* * * * *
It’s just about the anniversary of my dad’s death -- August 4. He went to the hospital on Wednesday and died on Friday.
We celebrate birthdays and auspicious anniversaries, so feeling dismal on the anniversaries of dismal events makes sense. I didn’t expect that I would feel dismal, but I have been. It’s not so much the return of the dead, or that I miss him more; it’s that I remember his suffering. Why did I not think it would effect me?
* * * * *
I had to return Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity by Richard Rorty to the library long before finishing it. I disagreed with a lot of it, but always stimulatingly, and I was enjoying it, and found much of it useful. I was sad to give it back.
* * * * *
Among my points of disagreement: Rorty’s preposterous claim that the theory of liberalism had nowhere to go, that it was completely developed. No. I do support his characterization of and hope for liberalism: Up with freedom, down with cruelty.
But liberal theory has barely begun to address international inequality. Especially when viewed through the liberal lens of “freedom,” with the notion that borders should be open -- we aren’t even close to figuring out how to get there in a way that wouldn’t impoverish our country too.
The idea of international borders -- the idea of competing states -- is human-made, and, hopefully, humanly un-makeable. But it’s a long way away.
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