[dis]Engage[d]

It goes without saying that America, in recent years, has been going through a bit of a rough patch. Perhaps it's not even just America, but the world in general. Take for example the purported Vegas of the Middle East, Dubai.  Gus Lubin, a reporter for Business Insider, stated that "40 percent of the buildings in Dubai are vacant...[and in] comparison only 28 percent of homes are vacant in America's ghost town, Detroit."

This kind of information leads me ponder the following:

What exactly does the German-made duschdas showergel entitled "Dubai Dream" actually smell like? While my time abroad is somewhat of a distant memory, I recall it smelling of economic failure and parabens.

What does a troublesome economic condition mean for the market? For the individual? For collective society? Bailouts, foreclosures, and strikes, oh my! What ever is an individual to do in such an unrelenting miasma of fiscal negativity?

Enter Wisconsin and its state workers: pensions slashed and union powers diminished. Public school teachers and other state employees are now fervently taking to the cold, unforgiving streets and decrying the new budget plans, exercising one of the most fundamental of American rights: protest.  While on one hand Governer Walker insists the budget cuts will lessen the burden on the debts facing future generations, teachers are reluctant to let go of the theoretical thousands of dollars implied by cut cuts.

 Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R), and what appears to be the kin of Cousin It from the Addams Family

The most important part of Walker's new cuts involve taking away the bargaining power of unions and requiring employees to pay union fees and paying what he calls "a little bit more" for health insurance and pensions. At this point, one wonders just how the protesters will win this battle as funds from out of state flow into the Republican coffers of Wisconsin, ensuring that corporate interests are still up for consideration when privatization comes along.

It is blatantly obvious that big businesses are going to love the opportunity to jump on any public projects and offices that become privatized.  At this rate, law enforcement, healthcare, and basic education are going to slip into the hands of corporations.  And if these ventures fail miserably due to dreadful mismanagement and exploitation of the vulnerable? Well we've learned that the government is pretty keen on bailouts to the order of trillions of dollars. TRILlions. 

Outside of Wisconsin, countless other American cities are now protesting in solidarity, fearing that their state might be next in line for cuts as their local governments mull over Walker-esque policies.  This becomes an interesting dialogue indeed, as Wisconsin rises to be a veritable center of political protest and unrest.  Reuters reports that a Wisconsin man has ordered a rather large supply of vuvuzela horns, to be distributed to protesters when they arrive for their next fight at the capitol.

While saying the word vuvuzela itself renders such terrible auditory World Cup memories, to think the protesters are now arming themselves with such instruments...well they're definitely going to be heard one way or another. Horns aside, one can't help but stop and reflect on how these public workers are the lifeblood of a dying breed of truly "engaged" Americans. They know what they want and they aren't afraid to turn up the volume until they're satisfied.

I pass up the very opportunity to question my bank when I'm charged a three-dollar "transaction fee" or when Sprint tacks on an extra ten dollars a month for "premium data usage." It's a sense of complacency, knowing that going through the proxies to fight these charges feels like an epic struggle between man and corporate behemoth. I, myself, am "OK" with far too much to make a long story short. 

But when these Wisconsonians and other state workers across the nation feel like they've just been given short shrift by government cuts, they kick the shit off their boots, grab their vuvuzeli, and rush the capitol. These are the truly engaged citizens, these are the citizens that can beat the state into submission. It would seem they fear nothing, except of course going home empty-handed.

One might simply say that capitalism is tearing America apart with the threat of privatization. I would however present the counterargument that capitalism, in its most simple, unadulterated form, would never have left America in its current state.  (Even Marx has my back on this one, I assure you.) Theoretically, the state provides the infrastructure for society to function and the market operates within these confines.  Perhaps we're in need of a redefinition of "infrastructure," to make sure that this "structure" is more conducive to social benefits and services that need to reside outside the market, independent of the market.

Let us, for a moment, interrogate is the idea of an economic "crisis."  We hear left and right that consumer confidence is up, that economists speculate a resurgence to occur "soon." This interesting dialectic of economic crises and recoveries only grows curiouser and curiouser, to quote a rather infamous Alice. But when exactly will America crawl out of this rabbit hole? When will America allow its most spirited of citizens the benefits they so passionately cry out for?

I was told once by an English teacher that to end a paper with a question or questions was poor form. But in this time of such uncertainty, it would seem that we still await the end to this economic fairytale gone awry.

DC


I've made use of the following articles for facts and figures:

• In Wisconsin, a jarring new note in discordant debate
• Wisconsin Gov. says Democrats failed to do their job
• Prank call fallout stokes Wisconsin union fight
• Wisconsin governor gets ovation from business group
• Dubai 40% vacant

Dans ma memoire...

If we think of ourselves as houses, the wake-up calls we get in life can tap our roofs in pebbles, heave stones through our windows, or crush our entire framework with immense boulders. Considering such a figurative spectrum, sometimes we're inconvenienced and other times nearly destroyed.  From these places of despair, we are pressed to remodel, reconstruct, or buy new windows to replace shattered glass depending on the gravity of our wake-up call. The "call" I received the other night is what I'll attempt to explain in the lines that follow:

It would seem a simple task to write a composition for a French class. Mine in particular was to regale the reader with what I deemed, during my youth, to be my favorite meal. I could have spent the 250-word requirement on cheese pizza, but when I really thought about it I came up with something a bit more meaningful. Wintertime meals at Babcia's house. (Babcia translates to "grandmother" in Polish, to be noted by my non-Pole readership)

And what a treat it was to experience a visit to chez Babcia! The ice tea was always sweet and tangy, the roast chicken always perfectly cooked, the linzer-tarts nutty and jammy, and the gravy...well the gravy was simply otherworldly. I wrote about all of this in French, hoping that my use of the imperfect and the composed past tenses jived and my adjectives agreed with their nouns in gender and number. But when I came to my last sentence, all of this "regaling" brought me to tears after I typed the following line:

C’est triste maintenant qu’elle s’est tombée gravement malade et elle ne peut plus cuisiner.

"It is sad, now that she has fallen gravely ill and can no longer cook." So maybe it's not perfect French, but a Frenchie could definitely see where I was going. These words became figurative stones, thrown right through each and every one of my windows, leverage courtesy of guilt.  The places and spaces I described in my composition were my days of good family eats: before my parents were divorced, before I knew the ways in which world politics wreaked havoc on our lives, before chronic illness immobilized a special woman in my life. Ignorance was such bliss. And in my case, it was a tasty bliss. But "bliss" no more it would seem.

If you've ever had a relative diagnosed with a terminal illness, or know someone who has had a family member diagnosed with one, you'll find that no one really deals with the situation in the same manner. In my case, I chose to stick my head in the proverbial sand and pretend it wasn't happening and that the experience would soon come to a close. I didn't want to hear that my grandmother couldn't remember who I was, nor did I want an account of her last horrible fall down the stairs. What a coward is this man, I say.

Sticking my head in the sand not only fractured my relationship with my grandmother, but also fractured my relationship with a past I can revel in.  All things pass and life is not static, no matter how sandy our hair gets. But as we reflect on the past, we sometimes see something we didn't before. If we're of the olfactory sort, a smell sometimes triggers a sensory memory of a certain place. And for the more visual or auditory soul, the mystery of déja vu feelings lend the sensation of, "I've been here before: in this exact moment, place, and time."

The flood of memories I experienced completely paralyzed me. Every single visit to the mall carousel, every trilled laugh, every preparation of the dog's dinner: I allowed this woman come alive in my head in such a lucid way.  A professor once told me that nostalgia was an unnecessary glorification of a fictitious past, but I beg to differ on so many levels Professor Katz! We have every reason to glorify and place importance on our memories--almost an obligation. So let's take a closer look, shall we?

We can very deeply internalize the values hidden among our memories, good and bad. The types of lovers we won't soon seek again, the places we return to for pleasant nostalgia, and advice we disregarded now actualized, initially thinking ourselves the wiser.  There is no greater bounty than the treasures of our past, in the ways they shape our current reality and self. We must in turn be able to equate the experiences of burning our hands on the stove and for the first time producing a delicious feast from that very same appliance--in both instances we learn, we experience.

One might say that those who disregard history are doomed to repeat it. Verily, I say. I merely suggest that we examine our own histories, our own memories: going local instead of global for a moment. Where did I fracture something, and where did I shed light? What moments did I come at someone from a place of hate, and when love? Life is simply too short, and too quickly allows for a growing list of things we "should" have said or done.

Memories can so effectively inform our decisions, so why not hold onto the good, the bad, and otherwise ugly souvenirs of life?

I know living in the moment is really big right now. It's hard to browse the self-help section without seeing something about living in the "now." I'm not asking for anyone to live anywhere else in the temporal continuum. What I think might be helpful, though, is an occasional glance rearward to make sure we aren't destroying anything in our wake. And of course, a glance forward in good health and clear conscience doesn't hurt, either.

In community,
David