Noah Counte

Themugs made a thought-provoking reminder regarding American politics and the War in Iraq yesterday. The post was timely for me, as I recently had a conversation with a coworker that reminded me of this very point. It’s time that I weigh in.

First, you’ll notice I’ve put up a sticky post. I swore I would never do that, as scrolling to find the latest post is irritating to me, and I didn’t want to subject you to such irritation. It’s a short post, and hopefully, its content will be worth having it consume prime browser real estate. I intend to leave it as long as it makes sense to remind ourselves that while we trade banter , recipes and affection, there are people embroiled in activities that affect lives (and cause deaths). The post contains a link to a page I created with counters that track US war dead and US dollars spent in the war effort. I hope you will reflect on these stunning numbers from time to time. If I can find counters that track civilian casualties and other things that underscore the horror, you will see them added to the page.

The reason this goes up now, is because I had a walk to lunch with one of my coworkers Friday. She’s going through a rough spot in both her personal and professional lives, as am I. There is a great deal going on at home, and huge changes coming at work for both of us. It’s something of a struggle, and we went back and forth complaining about how hard we have it. It’s nice to vent.

Eventually, conversation turned to other things, and she started to talk about the War in Iraq. I don’t remember what was said, exactly, but I said “sometimes, I have to ignore the big stuff, so I can handle the small stuff.” Her reply was that there is no big stuff. Wow. What this means, of course, is all the big stuff ends up in your yard. Right. We've spent well over 500 billian dollars making war. That's a lot of dollars not being spent on making people's lives better. If you think it's coming out of our collective savings, think again. Our leaders have saddled each of us, man, woman and child, with $25,000 in debt to the Chinese. A family of four has a $100,000 debt that they didn't incur, and probably don't know about. God luck with that future! What all this means is that even though I am overwhelmed in my little world, I have to do something with regards to the rest of the world. Hence my counters. I’ll have to do more, but it’s a start.

The War isn’t the only place bad things are happening to you and me. Professional sports turn a huge profit due to government subsidies. Local and state governments spend your tax dollars to build stadiums. A half billion dollars in Indianapolis. That’s a half billion that isn’t paving roads, supporting health care, educating children… you get the picture. I like sports as well as the next guy, but things are way out of skew when we subsidize owners so that they can afford to pay players tens of millions of dollars per year, but we don’t feed children in poverty. Again, the point is, it lands in your neighborhood.

I’m done rambling, but I hope you’ll take a moment now and then to reflect on the world around you.