Statistics

When I was in grad school, I had to take some quantitative courses. One of the textbooks was "How to Lie With Statistics." Sometimes I wonder if a lot of economists and statisticians have taken that book too close to heart. I keep hearing about all this cheery economic news. But so far in my travels, and my questioning of travelers, I'm not getting all that much.

With luck, maybe it's just early in the "recovery." I mean, everything about this economic rebound can't be illusion.

The Signs

Anyone seen them? I call them the “pre-hobos.” Boys to men with few prospects, often no transportation, and who live in the weird twilight between merely poor and truly homeless. I think they are symptomatic of the country’s economic and social ills, and it bodes not well.

The desperation I see in so many places. Like the woman with so many problems and no economic hope. Do you REALLY think you as a human being have ANY more right to a privileged life than she does? For a supposed nation of faith, we are far too focused on this life and not on the next. Lazarus anyone?

Where?

is progress and momentum occurring? What part of the present gives confidence about the future of this nation?

So far, when I've asked this question, people have given me only vague generalities, or, when they give specifics, those specifics fall apart after a few questions.

Are there enough people who want to make things better, who don't want to be misled by illusion, who don't want to delude themselves, who don't want to retreat into escapism and denial and absurd jingoism?

I have what I want to be the answer to that. But so far, I have come to no answer.

Beyond Tragedy

“One of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence at the very moment when the decay which leads to its death has already begun.” Reinhold Niebuhr

Confront your illusions, delusions, escapism, and denial America, and prove him wrong.