Day After Election Day

In 2002, we were still living in N.Y. Things were still pretty good for us - so, we decided to go to Philadelphia to a Stones Concert.

My mom was gone, as was Suzy's cat - we stayed a couple of days and had a good time -- concert, museums, good restaurants.

We left and were headed back to Long Island -- somehow we got caught on some one way streets, and ended up in a bombed out 3rd. world country. Even some guys on street corners gave us quizzical looks -- as if to say, "What the fuck are you doing here?".

Finally found a cop car. Stopped and asked for directions. The cops looked at us warily, as if to say, "What the fuck are you doing here?".

We explained we were lost, were attempting to get back to Long Island. They relaxed, gave us easy to follow directions, and we finally got back on the road.

Outside the rebuilt "center city", outside the boulevards, promenades, skyscrapers, and historical sites, we saw nothing but ruin -- broken down, unkempt, houses, neighborhoods. Knots of unemployed young men -- and these were "good times". This was "prosperity".

We have developed what looks like a permanent underclass -- black, white, brown. People who are effectively disenfranchised, forgotten, ignored.

This is NOT "The Tea Party". "The Tea Party" folks would RUN away from those folks. Liberals would say some nice words, check their wallets, count their fingers -- and get out of Dodge. Conservatives would "tsk, tsk", blame them for their plight, call for lower taxes, exhort them to "pull yourselves up by your boot straps", and leave.

The fact of rotten schools, no services, and generations of poverty - with a population who cannot even imagine anything else (unless it's sports or crime) is not understood by anyone -- whether by "accident", ignorance, or willful stupidity.

Don't forget ---- these were still "good times" for many. "Good times" for a nation recently attacked, fighting a war, not yet totally cynical.

We have lost a generation or two. we have sent decent jobs away. We have sown the seeds of our destruction. We have developed a PERMANENT PROLETARIAT. This as we end welfare, cut back on schools, cut back on services, turn everything but our gated communities (real and virtual) into our version of Victorian England.

The attitude of folks to the "lesser class", the attitude of so many men toward women -- especially those they see as "lesser". The attitude toward workers, toward shop keepers, toward "the little people" has become nothing more than UNAMERICAN.

We have become so mean spirited even the idea of "community", of a "commons", is laughed away. We don't give a damn -- unless it happens to us, or we see a picture of a bedraggled puppy, a lost child -- then we give a little -- and, forget all about it.

Don't raise taxes. Don't fix the roads, unless they are ours. "Shrink the government", but "Keep your hands off my medicare" -- while I demonstrate against universal health care, or even expanded health care.

Cut, cut, cut, cut -- but don't ask me what -- because I only want you to cut "their" programs --- not mine.

What will it take to make America "great" again? Perhaps a little gratitude from those who have something? Perhaps a sense of community? Perhaps the threat of revolution?

Even then, how will we undo the years of abuse, the years of neglect, the massive distrust we have fostered among those we choose to ignore?

Will we actually reap what we have sown -- or will we just sink down to the bottom -- another formerly "great" nation?.