America needs more than a reboot. We need some snazzy new peripherals–new energy generation and distribution system, new mass transit system, new telecom infrastructure, massive clean-up and realignment of wealth–it’s time to tear down the blue drapes that have given our statue of Justice a false aura of modesty and put the old girl to work again for all of us.
Tom Friedman borrowed Obama’s “reboot America’s image” trope and applied it more broadly. We need to reboot America, he says, and I like the concept; but I have trouble accepting at face value anything Tom Friedman suggests. Tom Friedman is so much part of the problem that when the boat sails for Elba with Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Wolfowitz aboard, Tom should have a berth as the cabin boy.
Friedman is one of those fellows who goes along and gets along, a great moralizer in step with the dominant power of capital. As we balance that power with democracy over the next few years, as we reveal the oligarchy and let folks decide what to do with them, how to manage their wealth, whether or not it’s worth it to bring them to justice, Tom should be tried with the rest of them and allowed to travel first class in one of the first tumbrel’s to justice.
But we do need to reboot. We need to reexamine the insane emphasis we have put on “business,” the reduction in support for our mutual welfare. We need great programs of public investment, and sound regulation where now there is outlawry. monopoly, and market manipulation. We need to freeze the assets of all who benefited from the Bush giveaways, tear down the wall of shame he erected on our southern border, nationalize the energy industries, and in general do things entirely ddiffernet from the way they are done today. We need to look to Europe and Asia for working models and follow their lead. We need to return to the forty hour work week, or why not thirty-five? We need to assure income and health care and education for all.
We need a reboot alright, and one of the first boots we should give should land squarely on the ass of that pontificator, Tom Friedman.
4 Comments
Reboot brain first. Then reboot rebooting itself
I second that e-motion.
Let’s hope someone gets cracking and makes a gay flick featuring Bush and co. sailing the high c’s and taking turns lavishing their moral fibers on cabin boy Tom,as soon as humanly possible. Could be the highest grosser of 2024 – I can’t wait till the part where the Somali pirates hijack the ship and get all medieval on the boyz before selling the lot on eBay.
We need to reexamine the insane emphasis we have put on “business,†the reduction in support for our mutual welfare. We need great programs of public investment, and sound regulation where now there is outlawry. monopoly, and market manipulation. We need to freeze the assets of all who benefited from the Bush giveaways, tear down the wall of shame he erected on our southern border, nationalize the energy industries, and in general do things entirely ddiffernet from the way they are done today. We need to look to Europe and Asia for working models and follow their lead. We need to return to the forty hour work week, or why not thirty-five? We need to assure income and health care and education for all.
IMO this is so right. There’s nothing natural about the way things have evolved over the past 30 or 40 years, and North American society has become, I think, profoundly anti-human.