The Summer of Ugh

I've been wondering if other people were noticing it, too: a summer when the stakes (real stakes, not just status symbols) all seem so terribly high but the news, such as it is, runs non-stop Olympic fluff stories, Amber Frey (a slightly shoddier piece of fluff but I suppose it's really too early for her to get pregnant by another married man), terror alerts that change with the president's poll numbers, Bush wearing work-style shirts for the first time in his privileged life, shark attacks, Michael Jackson, Paris Hilton, and the venom of the political ads.

People are tense. You can feel the undercurrent even up here in so-called bucolic Vermont.

Companies are still having massive layoffs (Fleet Bank announced 1500 job cuts on Thursday, and they're just one) even if they get no coverage and almost everywhere, there are hit-and-miss stories of people losing their benefits, even if they're still on the job. Foreclosures, bankruptcies, and other types of financial default are way on the rise, as appears to be different forms of robbery.

There's a smell of fear and desperation in the air, even as the media focuses on the few people who are living high because they manufacture weapons, war, fear, and social sodomy.

Nice people who happen to show up at a Bush rally sporting anything less than slavish Bush-licking behavior get arrested, tossed out, threatened. People who force their "Our country is best no matter how bad we are" mentality on us also spring up everywhere leading boycotts against people who don't their view; for them, liberty is the right to tell everyone else to shut up.

But a lot of good Republicans I've talked to are noticing the smell, too. And no, the smell isn't just Bush or just Kerry. It's a certain sense that neither candidate stands up for more than they side-step, that neither is terribly representative of them, that America may be a little too far along a very bad road to easily turn it around, even with the best of leadership. At the same time, we've had very bad leadership for four years and even though many of us think that Kerry will do a better job than Bush, we realize that a) he's not perfect b) the ultra right nut quotient has grown too powerful (to the point where the rest of the world sees America as all those types) and c) politics rarely helps the people.

Parents should feel quite apprehensive as the new school year closes in. I don't think any president has ever abhorred the proper education of non-rich children as much as the current administration. Each year, the public school system is bled ever drier while the Pentagon grows fatter.