Depression

Over the past few months my life has become filled with anxiety with the economy. I have watched as friends and colleagues have lost their jobs and then watched as few of them have found work. We are entering a new and mean world and that world makes much of what I see in poetry less than serious in contrast. It is hard for me to concentrate.

It seems to me that this is an axial time in history while I am happy about Barack Obama's victory it seems to me that he is swimming against a tidal wave. I see it in business no one is buying anything and no one is interested in investing. The trickle down effects are evident everywhere.

I keep wondering about the past few years. The Internet and Housing Bubbles, the outsourcing of jobs to Asia and Latin America, the war in Iraq and 9/11. Seems clear to me that powerful forces are making decisions that are hurting literally billions of people and no one has any say over those decisions.

Michael Moore was on TV last night and he said something profound. When the bankers and money people came to congress they were helped immediately, when the Auto industry came for help they were chastised. Sure the auto guys made mistakes but worse mistakes than Goldman Sachs? The fact as Moore put it the auto guys make things. Their workers are not suit wearing elites from New York and Chicago and Charlotte they are working people and those people do not matter in America.

As we go into Christmas I see the anxiety everywhere. The fear of loss and losing everything. I see in my own family retired people watching their life's savings go up in smoke. A recent New York Times article said that within 10 years college will be so expensive that no one who is middle class could afford it anymore. It makes me want to scream "stop" and ask why?

The reasons are simple really. The elite's will always get what they want because they have power. The rest of us will pay for that power. The guys on Wall Street may be losing billions but they are all still very rich- when US Steel lays off workers they take away their pensions and severance and those workers lose everything.

I hope that President Obama remembers the regular people and I hope he understands what is happening to the country and the world. The new world order is here and it looks allot like the 1930's. I do not know what the solution is to this problem but what I do know is that many people I know will never have the lives they once had.