I thought it was a joke, and it is-but at our expense without the laugh. My wife shared with me last night a webvert by a sporting shoe company, in a partnership to market Reebok sneakers which smell like flavors of Kool-Aid, cherry, grape and whatever. I suspect grape will NOT be available in Guyana, but don't quote me on that. All of this causes me to remember that old joke about a dog, and something he can do, that, if we could, we'd do nothing else but that all day. It sidesteps the bigger question: Because we can do something, should we?
Today, in Germany, is the 75th anniversary of the Nazi Party's assumption of power and the beginning of the end for tens of millions of human beings who became that point where the road and the sky collide. By the time the Nazis were beaten, not merely defeated (Kaiser Wilhelm and his spike-heads were defeated during the first world war, but the Nazis were crushed into the fragments their cities were pulverized into by aerial bombardment), the centuries-old practice of pogroms, be it superstitious hatred of Jews or gypsies or the politics of persecution of all 'left-leaners' (and don't forget those whose sexuality was suspect or those born with physical or mental defects) had been married to the conveyor belt of mass assembly, a gift of the Industrial Age, so that murder took place on a scale unimaginable in the history of humankind. As all of us discovered in the decades, and lifetimes, since the Thousand Year Reich was forced into bankruptcy a skosh more than a dozen years after its start, it takes a lot to laugh and it takes a train to cry. Complicity through silence of other nations around the world who knew of the barbarism but who said nothing and who did even less, served as the tracks for that train.
And now, just in the USA, where are we? Quick review: we have borrowed so much money from so many other nations, and from ourselves, it's possible we actually own nothing, except more debt than has existed since the beginning of time. We have an over-priced, over-burdened health care system that few can afford and fewer still are willing to try to repair on behalf of the nearly fifty million who have no health insurance at all, meaning they flood emergency rooms that can least afford to see them, if they can go anywhere for health care at all.
Ethically, economically, morally, spiritually, we have lived hand to mouth for so long, we may end up eating our own arm just to survive. American manufacturers are an endangered species deserving of a place in a museum, but, not to worry, Congress is holding hearings. Of course, the hearings are about major-league baseball players and their use of performance enhancing drugs (what an interesting twist on that health care crisis I alluded to a moment ago, eh?) but we're doing the best we can. Besides, the Super Bowl is Sunday and buying a thirty-second commercial costs in excess of two and half million dollars (not to MAKE the commercial, mind you-to load it into a player and insert it into the broadcast of the football game. Nice work if you can get it.) so leave your name and number after the tone and maybe we'll get back to you.
Hey! Nice sneakers--you don't have edible underwear, too, do you?
Every fight is a food fight-if you're a cannibal.
-bill kenny
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