Thanksgiving Leftovers

Posted on 27 November 2009

I ‘ve been wanting to write about a number of things over the past few days, but Thanksgiving swept in and I’m just now beginning to see the light of the day after. First, that this Dubai situation is strange — strange how our core financial situation can be so tied to something on the other side of the world that glitters. Truly global, I guess. Is it all too many moving parts?

I’ve been affected, also, by the brutal corruption that has so clearly been rampant these past twenty or so years; and remain upset that so little has changed under Obama. And yet over the past few days I’ve also been considering how corruption has been so much a part of this nation from its inception. After all what more horrific corruption can there be than slavery, than the slaughter of Indians, than women being chattel? Corruption seems to be humanity’s middle name. Maybe I have to just relax a little.

I’ll try.

Also there’s Michael Moore’s beautiful entreaty of 15 points about how we can best deal with this existing world (of corruption), including taking better care of ourselves, even as he seems to have gained even more weight. Worrisome. I want him to stick around, but I don’t know how long that will be if he keeps all that weight on and works so hard. And under the circumstances how can he tell us with such moving conviction that we should be carefully taking care of our bodies, if he doesn’t take care of his? I hope he’s seriously dieting now.

Finally, I’m told that the US Treasury has taken “In God We Trust” off the new dollar coin. Is this true? I’ve been looking for the coin, haven’t found one yet (with Thanksgiving and all.) But this too is worrisome (and kind of strange) particularly in light of the CEO of Goldman Sachs claiming that he (Lloyd Blankfein) was doing the work of God. The right wing is up in arms about the coin. I’m up and arms about Lloyd’s claim of divine oversight. It begins to feel like there’s some common ground here between the right and the left (always good), but I can’t quite figure out what it is yet.

I’ll try.