Good Times

Open your newspaper, check your news outlets on the Internet, and switch on TV news. A lot is happening.

First are celebrity news stories. Smiles all around. Ridiculous fashions, cars, houses of enormous size. Money and more money. Sports are next with a lavish array of items, interviews and scores. A rich recounting of game highlights is also provided. With the sports news comes tales of wealth and extravagance. Next are society page items – weddings, engagements, retirements, wedding anniversaries, and reports of many charity events with photos of runners, dancers and ball gowns. Tuxedoes, too, complete with cummerbunds, bow ties and glistening shirt studs. More money in the news.

Then the business section with even more wealth stories, stock indexes, new executives hired, or old ones retired, even others in the corporate suite involved in lurid affairs or scandals that currently shake the hallowed halls of their employers. Mergers and acquisitions are next, along with stories of brutal competition from foreign commerce. Employment figures follow the trendlines of the good and bad news. Finally getting real about wealth or lack thereof. Jillions of dollars are reported in the news related to everything imaginable.

Then a story about average wages being back to the level of 1974 when inflation is calculated out. Imagine that. Wealthy lifestyles of the famous and glamorous, then non-wealthy lifestyles of the rest of humanity.

Then political news, world news, international intrigue and negotiations highlighted in many unrelated stories.  Just think of the juxtaposition of the real news in lineup with all the rest of the glitter news. Quite a difference.

I remember a time when we celebrated good times experienced by most of us. Not just a few. Not just the elite. Hell, the elite wouldn’t be elite if it weren’t for the existence of all the rest of us. How about that for a sobering thought?

When the president claims America is great again, calls people dogs, scum and all the other negatives he can think of, and then runs an administration that disempowers people and enriches the few, what kind of universe do we live in? What kind of universe does he live in?

I’m thinking we’ve had enough of this. It’s time for change. And that time is now.

August 17, 2018