I'm Not Mad

I don’t think I am as mad as hell. I think I can take a little bit more in fact. I don’t why that is, I don’t have any special hidden reserves or caches of loot buried in a Swiss account or a bank in the Bahamas or wherever rich people keep their funds. I don’t have a wife who hasn’t worked a day in her life but somehow says that $160 million is hers and that whatever I may have done illegally has nothing to do with her assets. I am no more secure in my life or situation than anyone else I know, and yet as the world seems to be on the edge of heading into the abyss, I am not mad about it and I wonder why.

I think I should be mad. I see the value of my property fall as well as those around me. I see my debts rise in proportion to the hike in local taxes that are coming and the increase in insurance premiums. I also see my ability to cover those obligations decrease more and more while I receive less and less in services that I pay for. We only have 6 police officers in my town and 2 of them are part timers. At night the police station closes and if something happens you have to call the City of Camden, the county seat, and have them dispatch someone. I should be mad, but I’m not.

There are a lot of people who are upset and or up in arms about the bonuses that some executives received at AIG after fucking up the company and the economy. I am not. I see them as people who have learned to look after number 1 and I can’t fault them for that. If truth be told, in my next life I want to come back as one of them or at least have whoever represented them in their contract and compensation negotiations represent me.

I say if Congress or the Administration didn’t bother to care before about what the company would do with the money that they were given, or think that they wouldn’t do a Merrill Lynch shuffle board play on them, then why should I? You may answer because you and I will have to pay for it, but I would say that I’ll be long dead by the time that thing is paid for. I mean isn’t that we have done before, what we do now? Don’t we just pass on our obligations and the results of our actions on to those who come behind us? Isn’t that what things like global warming, national debt and social secuity all about?

For years now, corporate executives have made a ridiculous multiple in earnings of their average employee, and no one said anything; probably because people were just waiting for the opportunity to get the chance to make that amount of money for themselves. And now that things are going sour, people act like the inspector in the movie Casablanca, shocked to find out that there is gambling going on in the premise, but I’m not mad.

Really I’m not mad. I think like a worker bee, like a drone, I just shovel shit from one hole to another and wait for the next shoe to drop. I’m resigned to it.

I taped a copy of this movie years ago when I first saw it. But I’m not sure I know where it is now and it seems to be so appropriate at this time. Although I know I’m not at that stage yet, but I'll let you know when I am.