Tomorrow’s Hope is to Forget Yesterday.
The last day of the first half of a not-soon-to-be-forgotten year…2009. On the one hand, the change and hope that was to shape our lives have come and, on the other hand, they have gone. The shape of our lives has never been so molded by events in so few months as having the past 6 months.
Politically, we have seen the country straining to regain its former stature yet recessing into the depths of political meddling. Once you lose respect, it’s forever a struggle to gain it back. People are fickle and the media invites new opinions so a new leader is ready to be crowned even if such princely rewards are undeserved.
Also, the scale of scandals is created to awe. While the end of the Bush-era was sure to help weed out the bad politicians, the beginning of the year saw scandals, albeit normal in European culture, that were unheard of in the U.S. Spitzer and Sanford became powerful only to give into temptation that seems to be an inherent trait of such powerful men in recent years.
Socially, our fabric is being torn in various areas. The deaths of 3 great icons of American culture are so drastic that it may take years to understand our sorrow. Our capitalistic culture is not only being attacked by outsiders but from within. Are we so spoiled and lazy that we don’t realize that the American dream isn’t such an aspiration anymore?
The most fulsome of all is the economy. The very basis of capitalism seems to be under threat based on the events of the past months. While such anomalies seem to cast out the old and bring in the new (a restatement not a recession), it seems as though this recession will cast out more than previously imagined.