Two things that have got me angry, lately

Recently, two things have got me furious. The first is the the hostile response to the economic stimulus package that the President has proposed. Living in this market-driven world as we do, we must recognize that it is the American Way to gently steer the economy in the 'right direction' by fooling with the interest rates, tinkering with legislation, with nobody really paying attention to the background assumptions that make everything supposedly work. One is that the economy must grow. Fine. (As one of my friends remarked, this is the philosophy of a cancer cell.) A little unemployment is good. Fine. (Good for businesses, apparently.) The stock market must keep going up. Well, that one was a loser. As everyone knows, the insurance industry has enjoyed a ride that depended on the stock market going up and up. They take your money, and take on your risk. They ship it out to Wall Street, and if by chance you need to call on them when disaster strikes, they give you a whole bunch of money from other customers, and go back to watching your money earning moola for them. But they have a contingency plan just in case the stock market goes down and down. It is: call on Congress for a bailout. It is the same plan the auto manufacturing industry uses to avoid making fuel efficient automobiles. Oh sure, the Japanese can make fuel efficient cars. If we were to do it, we would do it right. But we can't, so we won't. The logic is kind of flawless. The people who supposedly knew how to tinker with the economy, having safely brought us to this crisis, are now objecting to the details of Obama's proposed Stimulus Package. Government spending is good, as long as we don't put too much money into giving free health care for kids. Why? Because if kids get free health care, all those sick kids [we are told,] won't spend their own money on health care. Instead of taking the government free health care, and spending their own money on such necessities as french fries and Ipods, they're going to put their money under their little mattresses, and the government money would be utterly wasted. Another loser is education funding. The economically savvy Republicans have decided money infusion into education is a losing strategy. This is another way of saying that only the affluent deserve to have well-educated children. Why is it that the government throws money at everything that needs to be fixed except education? Does it need to be fixed, or does it not? Perhaps it was the Democrats who threw money into education. Let me be perfectly clear: throwing money into education is not enough. The entire country must begin to understand that education takes a village, too. It is the responsibility of teachers, students and parents. And education is not just reading, writing, and arithmetic. It is art, music, history, languages, everything. And money alone will not fix it. But without money, it cannot be fixed. The worst annoyance is this constant labeling of Obama as a Socialist. This name-calling is something America has learned from the Russians, apparently. The second thing that makes me very angry is the tendency of people to want to live in the Wilderness. According to Wikipedia, if the population of the Earth was uniformly distributed over the land area, there would be roughly 34 people per square mile. Now, those who dream of living in the Wilderness must want to do so because they would like to be where their eyes do not fall on other human beings. If they had to share their little corner of Eden with 34 others within shooting distance, this would presumably take some of the shine off the project. So in order to make these wilderness lovers happy, the rest of us have to stay far away. It seems a little preposterous that, by implication, these folks should want to insist on the vast majority of human beings staying in crowded cities (which some of us are inclined to do anyway), in order that their pristine wilderness be reserved for their exclusive delectation. I think the wilderness should be left alone, except for occasional visits by non-wilderness types. Anyone who prefers to be far from other humans (and, believe me, there have been moments when I sympathized with you) should have arranged to have been born in an era when there were far fewer than 6 billion human beings eying the wilderness, dribbling saliva on their bibs. Of course, if they do not want their mail delivered, that would be a point in their favor. Even better if they did not demand paved roads leading close to where they live. Still better if they do not clear too much land around where they live, especially the tops of hills and mountains. Still better if they leave the wildlife alone, and do not play loud music. If they minimize the amount of commuting back and forth to cities, that would be cause of some satisfaction. And if they get sick, one hopes that they manage with whatever facilities they have to hand, and not a helicopter invasion of the wilderness. Any wilderness recluse who reads these words will probably object to the implied denigration, but I'm sorry; I'm not happy with anyone who takes a disproportionate piece of the world's resources. Archimedes