The nation nervously glances at its watch, checking the calendar, counting the days till the end. We wonder what else could possibly go wrong in the ten days left before the Bush era mercifully ends, what other calamity could be set into motion, where the next collateral damage will spread its misery across the globe. We can hardly wait for the nightmare to be over.
Yesterday, the toxic fallout of the Bush years hit my family.
The ghastly unemployment numbers of 524,000 jobs lost in December are certain to rise in January:
"There is no end in sight in terms of layoffs," said economist Ken Mayland, president of ClearView Economics. "January could be worse because some companies put layoffs on hold because of holiday sensitivities."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Yesterday, one of the nameless blips on the January unemployment charts, perhaps #139,472, was attached to my son, a young man with a year-old baby daughter and a wife with a masters degree who can't find a job teaching because of budget cuts, so she works for little more than minimum wage.
I received the call from my son while at a coffee shop. The woman sitting at the next table looked up in concern as she heard my end of the conversation. I hung up the phone and our eyes met, and I blurted out that my son had just lost his job, the national headquarters was shutting down his small branch office of a non-profit land trust. He and his coworkers did good work protecting vulnerable properties from being bulldozed by over-development. They worked hard, committed to their job, they believed in what they were doing. Their boss broke down crying as he told them the entire office was shutting down in three weeks.
They have a dog, a house, and a mortgage; they already struggled to make it month to month. They will be OK, having family around as a safety net. My son wants to go to law school. We believe in the tenet that crisis creates opportunity. I think of all the people out there who don't have anyone to help when the bottom falls out and my heart aches.
How do these people, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the rest, sleep at night? Who cares, I know, but the pain and suffering inflicted on so many people, so many families, here and elsewhere, the collective sorrow and damage done and havoc created by their actions is a reprehensible national disgrace.
January 20th and President Obama cannot get here soon enough.