September 28, 2014: I know theres a lot of venality among the super rich and powerful. Back-stabbing, cheating, affairs, schemes to take wealth away from rivals, and of course, the classic courtroom battles over disputed inheritances. But there is nothing like the vulnerability and ugliness that one finds in people when youre struggling at the bottom. Its the cruel fight over the crumbs, the crushing of hope and expectations being dashed, its the hunter, the exploiter that knows youre vulnerable ... you realize very quickly who are the users, liars, exploiters ... and unfortunately, it is nearly everyone you encounter. When you hope for a life-preserver, they instead toss a drowning man an anvil. They dont see the value in you, so you become worthless, invalid in their eyes ... youre just an oddity, something there for their amusement perhaps. All the clichés roll off the tongue: Against the tide, upstream, up that famous creek without a paddle, against the wind ... So with that in mind, I turn to a classic Bob Seger song. Its not my favorite (that would be Main Street) but the lyrics to Against The Wind say more about life and how things can fall apart than just any song out there. Its all about how in post-modern, post-industrial life, one or two events can destroy you ...thats when the buzzards circle over and await your rotting corpse. Seger related the song to Detroit and Flint that saw the crumbling of the auto-industry and with that, Michigan became a harbinger of what was to befall the middle-class here (and perhaps elsewhere too) 30 years later. https://youtube/watch?v=e2efTlU36Tw
Posted on: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 23:53:40 +0000