A philosophy of greed

 

3/23/09

 

Winter struck again like a bad horror movie.

Just when you think the monster is dead, it comes back to life.

We have several old outside cats, who revived at the warm weather and now shiver on the front porch.

I should have suspected something on the first day of Spring when we got snow showers.

Fortunately, the weather stayed warm for yesterday’s St. Patrick’s Day parade in Bayonne – although one of the elder men from the Korean Veterans complained about his hands getting cold.

Since I walked up and down the mile long stretch between the office and the start of the parade, I remained warm.

But I’m out of touch with Mother Nature because I lack the daily rising ritual of my jog along the river.

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I watched the Di Vinci Code again last night.

We started to watch a TNT version, until I realized key pieces of the film had been cut out, creating confusion (possibly even seeking to keep the church off the station’s back).

The local book store owner doesn’t agree with me that the film is better than the book.

A kind of cult has formed around the book, mostly I supposed, former Catholics, who have become bitter over the church’s teachings.

The book has become the focal point of that anger, despite it’s being the work of a hack writer.

In adapting the book to film, Ron Howard managed to repackage the original concepts in a more acceptable way, giving them universality.

The most significant changes, however, came in simplifying the games and puzzles, which were never as challenging as the book lovers claim.

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Are we really living in the new Great Depression?

Republican commentators like Charles Osgood like to play down the fact that their philosophy of greed brought America back down to its knees, blaming everyone and everything for demise of the American Dream.

Instead of working to get us out of the situation Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush got us into, they attack the president for spending too much, and not giving more tax breaks to the rich.

Herbert Hoover would be proud of these Republicans since all they care about it making the rich richer, while the rest of the world starves.

I keep waiting for the next shoe to drop, waiting for the moment when we fall into the same total despair people felt back in my grandfather’s time.

His career fell to pieces and he was forced to live in one of the houses he built simply because he could find no one to buy it.

So far, I’ve remained relatively untouched by the disaster, as if the downturn is taking out the greediest or the most vulnerable people first before working its way into the lives of those most stable.

I wonder if this thing will eventually reach us as well.

My grandfather and the nation came out of the Depression with World War II, and I wonder just how bad things can get, and if it will take another World War to get us out of this.