I had this great idea for a post, in which I would say that watching the presidential debate last night made me think of nothing so much as Lili Taylor's slightly unhinged performance in the eighties classic Say Anything. You know, the part when she starts singing, "Joe lies! Joe lies! Joe lies when he cries!" (In my ideal post, I would have been able to link to a video of her doing that, but my YouTubeFu is not strong today.) Anyway, that was me last night, watching the debate and screaming, "John lies! John lies! John lies when he opens his everloving mouth!"
But frankly, I am just so pissed off at the whole situation that I can't summon up the fortitude to write a coherent post about all of his lies. (Don't even get me started on Sarah "Palling With Terrorists" Palin.) It feels like the whole world is teetering on the brink of something incredibly bad (Iceland going bankrupt? The whole freakin' country? And being saved by the Russians?) and the best they can come up with is to try to associate Barack Obama with some sixties radical who perpetrated his crimes when Obama was eight? Seriously?
I listen to NPR a lot, and this morning they had interviews with some New Mexico folks who are still undecided. Again, seriously? What the fuck are you waiting for? Do you need to see bread lines and bank runs to figure out that four more years of unbridled capitalism and greed would be an unmitigated disaster? Rome is burning, and AIG executives are off getting massages and playing golf. Does that not gravel your ass like it does mine? What's it going to take? Wall Street financiers actually showing up at your house and taking food out of your children's mouths?
I've had it with this system where the vast majority of us play by the rules, do what we're supposed to, and get screwed and screwed and screwed. Ten years ago, when I got my first "real" job after graduate school, I opened up a Roth IRA and contributed to it faithfully. Chip contributed to his 401k. All of those funds were--on the advice of every expert out there--invested in mutual funds. Though I have not been able to force myself to look at the actual figures, I'm pretty sure that we would have been better off putting them into a credit union savings account and earning .75 percent interest.
I remember talking with a financial planner in Massachusetts when we lived there in the late 1990s and asking if we wouldn't be better off keeping that money somewhere other than the stock market. "Oh no," she said. "The funds you're in, they're the kind of thing that are very stable. If they tank, then we're all in trouble, and we'll all have bigger problems than retirement accounts."
Who knew she'd be so prescient?
Listen, I know that compared to some, we're just fine. We're not in danger of losing our home; our kids have food and clothes; we can put gas in the car and pay the student loans. But dammit, compared to those who got us into this mess, we've got exactly jack shit--and we're about to get even less. I'm mad as hell, and I don't know what to do with this anger. Anne Lamott would tell me to pray or eat a Dove bar or go try to get people to vote for Obama. I'm trying, Anne. I'm trying.
Probably swearing at people and ranting is not the best first step, but it's what I've got.
They lie. They lie. They lie, and I'm sick to death of it.