Adding to the political hubub

A friend recently wrote me about the voting decisions needing made. I wrote back that yes, it is a sad circus out there. The voting up here is all done by snail mail, so people mostly have already done it by now. And yes, it seems to me to be a choice between voting for the ones who are struggling somewhat blindly to help the nation recover, vs the powerful obstructionist party, that knows that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Interesting that MCarthyism purging does not happen when the shoe is on the other foot. The whole thing reminds me of the kind of sports where teams win by causing the other team to lose: nothing constructive gets done. From the outside, one might say that the nation has been systematically destroyed from within starting in Y2K. How (and why) this could happen has long been a puzzle to me; but some answers seem to again be in the four temperaments that people can have one each, and that some temperaments are susceptible to having radio-TV going on in the background that has music, ads, and emotionally powered distorted news reports with warped interpretations of the news, with occasionally some fundamentalist-type passionate pastor proclaiming disaster is happening so be ready for it. But still I would think that lots of people would see through all that and disregard the massive brainwashing going on, and help fix up the place; but something is causing people to dysfunction, maybe it is the brains getting slightly damaged each day by cell phone radiation, or the hypnotics of the TV screen, and/or by the slow neurological damage by MSG in the foods they are fed, blimping them out too. Can America clean up her act, or will the fate be that the giant megacorporate conglomerates will rule the nation, using the hordes of working class as serfs, as the right-wingers have long envisioned and is being urged by big finance input by those megacorporations into the electoral process ongoing. Jobs are the key, good jobs; and guess who has the jobs in their pocket: the big corporations. No wonder they are so smug and confident they will rule totally, just drag their feet until the nation collapses enough. And do they have the integrity to rule America, corporations who have to send jobs offshore so as to make the most profit for the investors? What kind of responsibility for America is that?

One thing that is different is that there no longer is the apathy toward the political-government process, that there was as of when the right-wingers took over a decade ago, enabled by the apathy. The mess has got some attention.

As we try to compete in the world marketplace, price is a key factor. Our employees must bring in a huge income, as compared to those in the developing countries, because our housing costs are so huge; and our housing costs are so high because, well partly because the houses tend to be nicer than in third world countries, but mainly because of the business system where the price gets frequently jacked up without corresponding value-added to the property. Thus America workers need a much higher skill level to earn more to pay for a much more expensive place to live (etc); some of this can be provided by on-the-job-training - in fact often has to be, due to the specialization - but we tend to assume that formal education will raise the skill level. But higher education has been having troubles for a long time, even lower levels too. And we are competing with older civilization countries which have learned (no doubt the hard way, long ago) to educate both halves of the brain, not just the "left side" of the brain as our educational system tends to do nowadays. Two halves work much better than just one half; we miss out on the envisionary big picture capacity, which keeps things in perspective. And the world is changing so rapidly that the traditional 3 R's is not enough to prepare people for the modern workforce requirements. Plus, it is not just me that is getting a bit dingy - I'm old enough to excuse it - but lots of younger folks seem to be getting a bit that way too. How can businesses count on them to do the job always well?

Well, let's hope lots of people somehow manage to get out there and vote, best as they can manage to figure it out under the circumstances.