"Why would your blackness have anything to do with where I want to sit on an airplane?"
It took a while, the whole trip I remember, but we parted friends. We still are, when one of us thinks to send the other an email. How are you these days?
The big things today are the collapse of banks. Some are rescued, or bought by our government. Where do they get the money? Guess they print it. Some banks are bought up by other banks. The stock market goes up one day, down the next. We are all trying to figure out what is happening. I have heard and read dozens of explanations of how sub-prime (that means not quite absolutely first class) mortgages, sold by greedy salesmen to people who could not possible pay the mortgage for an overvalued house, caused all this. But of course there is a whole system behind that. It seems that those s-p mortgages were then mixed in with "good?" mortgages, then cut up in pieces and sold. The theory being that, yes, there may be one or two perhaps doubtful mortgages, but the good mortgages will cover them. Like, if you have rotten food, you mix it with good food, and then can it in small cans, and chances are that a buyer will get mostly good food.
And then I read somewhere else that really what drives the whole -now global- financial system is based on credit, or "liquidity," and something this writer called "valuation." Here's how I understood what he wrote. You buy an idea, or a plan to do something, or something that does not exist yet but probably will, with borrowed money. Then you turn right around and sell that non-existent-yet idea to someone else, who probably also pays with borrowed money. You make a profit, without using a penny of your own money. That's really clever, isn't it? Maybe clever but it is illusion.
The article ended by saying something like the whole world-wide financial system is an elaborate web of imaginary values tied together with non-existent expectations. As long as everyone keeps his mouth shut and plays the game, there is a profit. Enormous profit. The sky is literally the limit. But, at a certain moment, one of these imaginary values turns out to be less than the bank says, a lot less. And there are not just a few of these s-p mortgages but hundreds, thousands, millions. Other countries have invested billions in these global transactions in thin air-did you notice that in the last eight years we have lost the word million? Everything now is counted in billions. Pretty soon it will be trillions (for Americans a trillion is a million million, a one with twelve zeroes).
The second big thing that is happening of course is "the" election. That too, seems more and more spun of cobweb thin words that rarely mean much any more. To tell the truth (my truth) I don't know who these people are any more who so desperately want to be president and vice-president of this country that, as I see it, is in more trouble than it ever has been in its short two hundred and some years. This candidate is for the way things are; but tomorrow he says, no, the way things is wrong. The other one moves to the middle when there is really no middle to move to - the whole equation has moved so far to the right as to be almost off the board.
I decided we cannot go on this way. Soon we have to touch ground, feel the real earth under our feet. We cannot live in the upper layers of the atmosphere where all these glorious ideas and gambles are happening where nobody can see them, or even know what it all is about. The only thing I can think of is to be utterly honest. I cannot lie, even to myself; certainly not to you.
I don't like what those who supposedly represent me have allowed to be done in my name. I never wanted any war, not even against terror (that is another of those air words, "war against terror"). How can you make war, with 3 trillion dollars worth of airplanes, bombs, people, humvees, tons and tons of oil, against an idea? And it seems terribly evident to me that my government had many more hidden agendas. We almost certainly, I think, wanted our hands on what oil there will be when China and India start demanding more and more oil for their exploding economies. That is today, actually; not a future. I am appalled by our callousness here and elsewhere. Are we proud of being the nation with the most citizens in prisons? Do we think we are wonderful when we execute people who even perhaps were innocent? How do we make it feel right to torture anyone, friend or foe? After half a century of carefully establishing a world-wide, and world-accepted system of justice, we throw it all away without so much as an explanation. What did we allow to be done in our name?
I have felt a difference even here in Hawai'i, which always has been a very mellow place. I've lived in Hawai'i for more than half my life, and I am an old man. For a long time we used to think of ourselves here as having what the Tourist Bureau coined the Aloha spirit. Aloha, means hello and goodbye, and love, they said. It does not really mean love as "in love," but for instance love of the land, for the ocean that is so much part of our reality. We used to smile when helping someone, bank tellers smiled, police officers were pleasant and relaxed, we helped each other. Driving, we used to slow down so that someone could move into my lane before me. Not any more.
A few years ago all that changed. What changed is the sudden interest in buying land here and building houses that nobody asked for. The price of land increased five, seven, eight times in two or three years. The price of houses shot up, twice, then three times. Planeloads of "investors" descended on us to buy land, sell it six months later for double or triple the price. People from California - that is what we call them - moved here, bought a house sight unseen (from the pictures in a real estate brochure) for $300,000 to find out that yes, there is an acre of land, but it was clear-cut to build the three bedroom two bath house, all air-conditioned, of course. On an unpaved road, no piped water: you have to catch your own from the roof and filter it somehow. Fifteen miles from the nearest town that is not much of a town, on roads that are now so crowded that you have to plan your time of departure very carefully if you want to be able to sneak into a tiny break in the solid car to car in the single lane highway that runs into a divided double highway halfway to town. We have to drive California style now, we say: never give up your place in line, at all cost prevent someone to come in front of you. When there is a sign that says the right lane is closed half a mile further on, California style drivers speed up in the right lane, so that when they come to the barrier the rest of us have really no choice but to let them in.
We, and here I mean we, the people who lived here for at least five years. miss that Aloha spirit. It is a new heart disease: our hearts feel squeezed by new ways and customs that do not fit who we are.
Today I was thinking about all of that. We can't go on, like this. Of course, we can't. But the problem, or problems, is/are way over my head. I cannot understand the airy-fairy of modern capitalism. What is a billion dollars? Why would someone who has somehow gotten his hands on a billion dollars want to invest, or earn more? If he just stuck it under his mattress, buried it under a rock, he can take out a million dollars a year for a thousand years, or ten million dollars a year for a hundred years -- and who lives that long? I'm sure you can live on a million dollars a year (tax free, it is not earned, nor invested) very, very well.
And I am confused by the ferocity of a man not that much younger than I who talks angry in a soft voice words that are all over the map but when you look at them they really mean almost nothing at all. What does conservative mean to politicians? All I can connect to the word as it is used by American politicians is that they are against beliefs and individual behaviors that have nothing to do with what I think is the function of "government." Against gay marriage, abortion, against Islam but for Christianity, against socialism - which they seem to define as caring for poor people. They're for the flag, of course, the army, airforce, navy, marines, everybody must have some guns. They're for the death sentence. But then this candidate says he is in this not for himself, but for us. How, what, who?
And his running mate, who could be the famous one heartbeat from the presidency, is against pork, although she's done miracles getting pork for her projects: millions, many millions of dollars. They must be lying, but they do it with such enthusiasm that the Media repeat and repeat and some of us must think ... What do some of us think? Or do we think at all?
The other day I met someone I sort of know, but not well. She squinted in the sun and said, "You know that other guy, he scares me."
"Scares you, why? He seems a likeable guy, nice family, has done some really good things I can relate to." And, I thought, but did not say, he is "mixed" as the majority of humans are today! Instead, I stammered, "How are you scared?"
It took a while, the whole trip I remember, but we parted friends. We still are, when one of us thinks to send the other an email. How are you these days?
The big things today are the collapse of banks. Some are rescued, or bought by our government. Where do they get the money? Guess they print it. Some banks are bought up by other banks. The stock market goes up one day, down the next. We are all trying to figure out what is happening. I have heard and read dozens of explanations of how sub-prime (that means not quite absolutely first class) mortgages, sold by greedy salesmen to people who could not possible pay the mortgage for an overvalued house, caused all this. But of course there is a whole system behind that. It seems that those s-p mortgages were then mixed in with "good?" mortgages, then cut up in pieces and sold. The theory being that, yes, there may be one or two perhaps doubtful mortgages, but the good mortgages will cover them. Like, if you have rotten food, you mix it with good food, and then can it in small cans, and chances are that a buyer will get mostly good food.
And then I read somewhere else that really what drives the whole -now global- financial system is based on credit, or "liquidity," and something this writer called "valuation." Here's how I understood what he wrote. You buy an idea, or a plan to do something, or something that does not exist yet but probably will, with borrowed money. Then you turn right around and sell that non-existent-yet idea to someone else, who probably also pays with borrowed money. You make a profit, without using a penny of your own money. That's really clever, isn't it? Maybe clever but it is illusion.
The second big thing that is happening of course is "the" election. That too, seems more and more spun of cobweb thin words that rarely mean much any more. To tell the truth (my truth) I don't know who these people are any more who so desperately want to be president and vice-president of this country that, as I see it, is in more trouble than it ever has been in its short two hundred and some years. This candidate is for the way things are; but tomorrow he says, no, the way things is wrong. The other one moves to the middle when there is really no middle to move to - the whole equation has moved so far to the right as to be almost off the board.
I decided we cannot go on this way. Soon we have to touch ground, feel the real earth under our feet. We cannot live in the upper layers of the atmosphere where all these glorious ideas and gambles are happening where nobody can see them, or even know what it all is about. The only thing I can think of is to be utterly honest. I cannot lie, even to myself; certainly not to you.
I don't like what those who supposedly represent me have allowed to be done in my name. I never wanted any war, not even against terror (that is another of those air words, "war against terror"). How can you make war, with 3 trillion dollars worth of airplanes, bombs, people, humvees, tons and tons of oil, against an idea? And it seems terribly evident to me that my government had many more hidden agendas. We almost certainly, I think, wanted our hands on what oil there will be when China and India start demanding more and more oil for their exploding economies. That is today, actually; not a future. I am appalled by our callousness here and elsewhere. Are we proud of being the nation with the most citizens in prisons? Do we think we are wonderful when we execute people who even perhaps were innocent? How do we make it feel right to torture anyone, friend or foe? After half a century of carefully establishing a world-wide, and world-accepted system of justice, we throw it all away without so much as an explanation. What did we allow to be done in our name?
I have felt a difference even here in Hawai'i, which always has been a very mellow place. I've lived in Hawai'i for more than half my life, and I am an old man. For a long time we used to think of ourselves here as having what the Tourist Bureau coined the Aloha spirit. Aloha, means hello and goodbye, and love, they said. It does not really mean love as "in love," but for instance love of the land, for the ocean that is so much part of our reality. We used to smile when helping someone, bank tellers smiled, police officers were pleasant and relaxed, we helped each other. Driving, we used to slow down so that someone could move into my lane before me. Not any more.
A few years ago all that changed. What changed is the sudden interest in buying land here and building houses that nobody asked for. The price of land increased five, seven, eight times in two or three years. The price of houses shot up, twice, then three times. Planeloads of "investors" descended on us to buy land, sell it six months later for double or triple the price. People from California - that is what we call them - moved here, bought a house sight unseen (from the pictures in a real estate brochure) for $300,000 to find out that yes, there is an acre of land, but it was clear-cut to build the three bedroom two bath house, all air-conditioned, of course. On an unpaved road, no piped water: you have to catch your own from the roof and filter it somehow. Fifteen miles from the nearest town that is not much of a town, on roads that are now so crowded that you have to plan your time of departure very carefully if you want to be able to sneak into a tiny break in the solid car to car in the single lane highway that runs into a divided double highway halfway to town. We have to drive California style now, we say: never give up your place in line, at all cost prevent someone to come in front of you. When there is a sign that says the right lane is closed half a mile further on, California style drivers speed up in the right lane, so that when they come to the barrier the rest of us have really no choice but to let them in.
We, and here I mean we, the people who lived here for at least five years. miss that Aloha spirit. It is a new heart disease: our hearts feel squeezed by new ways and customs that do not fit who we are.
Today I was thinking about all of that. We can't go on, like this. Of course, we can't. But the problem, or problems, is/are way over my head. I cannot understand the airy-fairy of modern capitalism. What is a billion dollars? Why would someone who has somehow gotten his hands on a billion dollars want to invest, or earn more? If he just stuck it under his mattress, buried it under a rock, he can take out a million dollars a year for a thousand years, or ten million dollars a year for a hundred years -- and who lives that long? I'm sure you can live on a million dollars a year (tax free, it is not earned, nor invested) very, very well.
And I am confused by the ferocity of a man not that much younger than I who talks angry in a soft voice words that are all over the map but when you look at them they really mean almost nothing at all. What does conservative mean to politicians? All I can connect to the word as it is used by American politicians is that they are against beliefs and individual behaviors that have nothing to do with what I think is the function of "government." Against gay marriage, abortion, against Islam but for Christianity, against socialism - which they seem to define as caring for poor people. They're for the flag, of course, the army, airforce, navy, marines, everybody must have some guns. They're for the death sentence. But then this candidate says he is in this not for himself, but for us. How, what, who?
And his running mate, who could be the famous one heartbeat from the presidency, is against pork, although she's done miracles getting pork for her projects: millions, many millions of dollars. They must be lying, but they do it with such enthusiasm that the Media repeat and repeat and some of us must think ... What do some of us think? Or do we think at all?
The other day I met someone I sort of know, but not well. She squinted in the sun and said, "You know that other guy, he scares me."
"Scares you, why? He seems a likeable guy, nice family, has done some really good things I can relate to." And, I thought, but did not say, he is "mixed" as the majority of humans are today! Instead, I stammered, "How are you scared?"
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