Cars and Countries
Monday. A bit tired this afternoon, plenty to do, but no real ambition. Across the way with MRE for a couple of glasses of wine - I thought an excellent plan at the time - and then leaving the office around 4:00, walking along Broadway to take the bus when it caught up with me. People everywhere, of course; I am wearing a new pair of sun glasses, hiding behind a new pair of sun glasses that make me feel like I'm watching a television screen. I'm out there in the world, yes indeed, but I'm not out there in the world. No funky feelings of paranoia, the attitude pretty good, a bit of a buzz, watching people of every kind and stripe pass on by, a bubble floating with the rest of the bubbles down the street.
You thought the wine was “an excellent plan at the time”?
One glass would have been better. I'm sitting here in the early evening and the dregs of the wine combined with the funky head make me more scattered than I like. Still, the day is fine, the air just the right temperature. When I got home Amazon had delivered Lee Iacocca's Where Have All the Leaders Gone? and Al Gore's The Assault On Reason so I started the Iacocca book (a small, short, snappy, not overly long screed). I have no real knowledge or opinion about Lee Iacocca. I know the things most people know of his history, particularly his years spent turning Chrysler around, but otherwise I wouldn't have thought to buy, let alone read this particular book, if I hadn't read an excerpt in an email from my sister. This is his first paragraph:
“Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, ‘Stay the course.’”
It is good to know that others are wondering what in the hell is happening in this country. He'd voted for Bush in 2000 - he knew the father and decided to endorse the son and did whatever you do to be offered an ambassadorship after the election - but watched to his horror, as we all watched to our horror, what happened to the country after 9/11. He doesn't mix any words, this Mr. Iacocca. Not a happy camper. He's not particularly pleased with the Democrats, as I am not particularly pleased with the Democrats, and he's wondering what's happened to us, all of us, and why we've just sat here watching and not marching on Washington.
Anyway, if you think he's unhappy with the current administration, you should read what he thinks about the guy to whom he'd handed the reins at Chrysler who then sold it to Daimler-Benz, Iacocca watching as it was driven into the ground. Shit happens, I guess: to cars and countries.
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