Prosper-Alphonse Isaac:
Wrak van roeiboot op strand in Cancale
[Wreck of rowing boat on beach in Cancale] (c. 1912)

"I pray that we might come to understand one day."

Those buildings fortunate enough to still have businesses leasing their street-level spaces are nevertheless hollow above their second floor. Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco mirror each other. A generation ago, their downtowns bustled with economic activity. Each was the absolute envy of the other as postwar prosperity reversed their wartime austerity. Actual prosperity resulted. Since, a series of austerity-promoting presidents and feckless Congresses have managed to pretty much hollow out the promise evident on each street corner then. Now, Portland shows no shortage of first-class hotel rooms that overlook empty windows in century-old, once-proud commercial edifices. The Starbucks doesn't have seats, only stand-up tables to discourage the homeless from encamping there. The visiting writer can't, as he once casually did, find a corner to create his morning missive. He takes one to-go instead and stumbles back to his tiny first-class hotel room, with altogether too much furniture, overlooking near absolute devastation.

The austere years bought us little. They provided a surplus precisely once, which was used to justify borrowing multiples of what had been preserved in an infantile attempt to inflict democracy on historically hostile countries. All decent intentions aside, that one qualifies as at best naive and at worst, self-destructive. It eventually blew us up. Then another decent Dem was elected and started cleaning up that mess before another Republican clown came in to blow it all up again. The tax-cutting mentality seems unable to recognize how deficits expand. They always prescribe austerity as the cure for somebody already unable to make ends meet. Either they accuse them of being welfare cheats or of being guilty of beating a system intended to keep them enslaved. They take away what they cannot afford to lose. They routinely cut off their own noses to spite their own faces and blame the resulting Prosterity on those who must remain nameless because they never existed.

Now, it's the Mongol hordes harassing our borders. And the rapists and murderers who must certainly outnumber the law-abiding citizens. It's a wonder any citizen has been left unraped or unmurdered at the rate these criminals seem to be multiplying. The farmers find themselves among the destitute this time, still holding on for some reason, confused about why their chosen candidate appears to hate them now that he's in power. He always hated them. Now he can get even.

Our incumbent brought home a puppy from his latest failed diplomatic visit. Well, he did succeed in drafting some personal deals that should guarantee him another golf course to use in his retirement (may that happen soon!), but actual diplomacy took a backseat to his usual idiocy. The story first insisted that a perfectly good 747 was being given as a gift from the Qatari government to our president. He insisted that it would have been in bad form to refuse such a generous gift, even though our Constitution forbids it. Then the story, as usual with these clowns, grew legs. It turns out that the first iteration was an attempt by a private owner to dispose of this derelict airplane. He spent at least a million dollars to wire the thing together and fly it to Mar-a-Lago for our incumbent's approval. Then, later, our incumbent announced it as a gift to serve as a replacement for his current Air Force One, which is ancient, until the replacements were delivered. The deal would be that after leaving office, that 747 would follow the ex-incumbent into retirement as property of his presidential library. Latest estimates suggest it might cost a billion dollars to render this found puppy fit for presidential use, and take about a decade to finish, long after even an imaginary third term would end for him (may it happen soonest!). There will undoubtedly be more of this story before it fades from the headlines, as most of its predecessors eventually have. I expect more billion-dollar found puppies.

Meanwhile, while Congress tries to determine how to cut a third of our health care spending without totally upending our tenuous health care system, so that those all-important billionaire tax cuts can be affected, the upper floors of our once-proud and prosperous Broadway remain empty. Pigeons tap plaintively on dust-streaky windows and prosperity seems utterly unachievable from here. We long ago chose to refuse to increase the minimum wage, insisting that it would make manufacturing too expensive in this country. Then we exported manufacturing to cheaper venues anyway, abandoning an entire middle class to try to land jobs driving for DoorDash. Then we somehow elected a decent Dem who created the start of an economy that could actually work for you and me instead of for somebody we've never met and never will. Such an undertaking should have taken a few decades of dedication to complete, like the Prosterity had, but after four promising years, with our economy finally the envy of the world, he was summarily replaced with another of those austerity geniuses who firmly believe they can cut their way to prosperity.

Prosterity instead. Our economy lies prostrate on the wreckage of ideological fantasy. From Reagan, who never met a welfare recipient he felt deserved the support, through to the present occupant, who spends about half his time off partying and playing golf, and bringing home stray Trojan Horses he says are gifts from historically hostile enemies. Those upper floors of those elegant buildings couldn't care less. Our economy is not the only thing in distress here. Our lives are a mess made manifest by a machine more skilled at lying to itself than it is at lying to the rest of us, and it's damned skilled at both. We swallow a succession of rubber worms without learning who was fishing and who was the prey. I pray that we might come to understand one day.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #CHope , #PureSchmaltz