el rinconcito

I am working in a city this week where I went to university a couple of decades ago. I remember there being poor and homeless here then, but now it seems like there are so many more. There is plenty of money to piss away overseas, or transfer to the already wealthy, but there is little available to do anything right here near home. I feel like a millionaire when I can go to an ATM and pull out a hundred to get through the week while all around me people are splitting dollars and fractions of dollars to get through the day. Across the street from my hotel is a beat-up shopping center that contains a couple of the typical poverty places: a check cashing business and a plasma center. I find the plasma center the most egregious, as this is where the needle sinks into the veins of the destitute for a little cash. There was a parade of faded smoking Nissans, Hondas, and Chevys disgorging the many not-too-healthy-looking plasma donors all day. Many shopping centers are looking at least a little like this one now, or probably will soon. Closed businesses line the street for miles. Lots of closed businesses. Lots! Where is anybody working? I am working, though not as much, and my company is sending out mixed signals about the future.

In the midst of this, let's escalate a war! Why not. Let's say "cut Medicare" and "escalate a war" in the very same sentence. Let's torpedo any chance of health care for the sick. Education, bah! The treasury is broke and propped with smoke and mirrors. Uncle Sam sometimes looks as anemic as those plasma donors.

I saw these words on a webpage today. They were written by George Kennan, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R. and to Yugoslavia, and author of the post-war containment policy towards the Soviet Union. In these words, Kennan turned on decades of policy that he, himself, had helped to develop. I guess even he had finally awakened and smelled the coffee.

These words from 1966 (Vietnam War) strike a chord with me today:

"There is more respect to be won in the opinion of this world by a resolute and courageous liquidation of unsound positions than by the most stubborn pursuit of extravagant or unpromising objectives. ...

“Our country should not be asked, and should not ask of itself, to shoulder the main burden of determining the political realities in any other country, and particularly not in one remote from our shores, from our culture and from the experience of our people.

“This is not only not our business, but I don't think we can do it successfully."

I saw these words here at Consortium News.

Also noteworthy, the words of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States:

"[America] goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."

Good words, but there are a lot of good words out there.