attitude

Art of the Fire­bird still isn’t a polit­i­cal blog, but I’ve had a cou­ple of thoughts over the last few days to share.? Yes­ter­day, all day, when read­ing through so many of the blogs I fol­low, you would have thought that the sun was shin­ing every­where around the world, the sky was full of rain­bows, blue­bird songs were fill­ing the air, world peace had been achieved, poverty and hunger had instantly been wiped out around the world, and sci­en­tists had just announced cures for can­cer and the com­mon cold.

(Aside: the last is the one I REALLY wish had been true, as I’ve had a mis­er­able one for the bet­ter part of the week.)

You’d have thought the world sud­denly became per­fect as of noon on Tues­day, Jan­u­ary 20, 2009.

I didn’t share that euphoric feel­ing. In fact, I feel some­what sad that I couldn’t share that feel­ing. The cyn­i­cal, real­is­tic Fire­bird knew, and knows, that in truth the world is the same today as it was Mon­day. The Dow went right along with me, drop­ping 300 or so points yes­ter­day.? I know that “change” is the word of the day, the month, the cycle, but I’m just sit­ting back wait­ing to see what sub­stan­tive change really does happen.

What change do I actu­ally expect? I don’t have a crys­tal ball, I’m no sor­cer­ess or seer, but I’d have to say, not much. The cur­rent opti­mism may carry our coun­try for a while, but I expect that sooner rather than later, it will be pol­i­tics as usual in Wash­ing­ton, DC, and in every state capi­tol in the coun­try. Politi­cians, regard­less of party affil­i­a­tion, will act in their own self-interests, defined as get­ting re-elected and stay­ing in power with the assis­tance of lob­by­ists, polit­i­cal con­trib­u­tors, and power­bro­kers. Gov­ern­ment will con­tinue to expand in size, power, and influ­ence to the detri­ment of the indi­vid­ual, and will con­tinue to squan­der the money of the peo­ple it is sup­posed to serve rather than let­ting them spend THEIR money how they deem fit.

In other words, Same Shit, Dif­fer­ent Day. Though I’d love to be proven wrong.

One more thing — all the cheap shots at for­mer Pres­i­dent Bush and his admin­is­tra­tion over the past few weeks?? Tacky, tacky, class­less, and tacky!!! If peo­ple can’t respect the man, they can at least respect the office. I had to unsub­scribe from another blog yes­ter­day, that of a jew­elry artist who had been repeat­edly post­ing rather pretty mean-spirited things, after the author posted a pic­ture of a sign show­ing Pres­i­dent Bush wav­ing, with the words “Adios, Douchebag!” That was IMO dis­gust­ingly beyond the pale no mat­ter whose pic­ture was on it (and no, I’ve never been a big Bush fan). The author later removed the pic­ture, though not the post, say­ing they didn’t want to “sully their archives” with it. What­ever — I’m stay­ing unsub­scribed, and have lost pretty much all respect for that indi­vid­ual.? There’s no place in my life for that kind of ugly atti­tude, no mat­ter where it’s directed.