Feeling Funky

America is in a funk. At a time when the global economy, spurred by America's red hot markets, is reaching new heights. Global poverty is shrinking at a pace never seen before in human history. Fabulous technology and miracle medicine is feeding more people and saving more lives this year than last - year after year. Despite what people are led to believe the middle class in America is not so much disappearing as it is moving into the ranks of the wealthy. Yet we are a gloomy bunch. Why?

Michael Barone tries to get to the bottom of our funk in this piece on the Real Clear Politics website. I think he comes close with this paragraph:

It's partly a partisan response: Almost all Democrats are negative about the nation's future. But when one considers that America has not suffered another Sept. 11, and that it has enjoyed a surging and prosperous economy, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that citizens of this most blessed country are registering a verdict that is in tension with reality.

No doubt, Mr. Barone, but it's deeper than that. Since the 2000 election and especially since 2003 we have been treated in the main stream media and the entertainment world to a steady diet of vile pessimism. We are told with a smirk that Bush is Hitler and that we are being spied on and and our speech is being suppressed, our freedoms are literally swirling down the drain. Does anyone remember actor Tim Robbins and his "ill wind"?

Al Gore turned up the heat with his over the top rhetoric about the end of the world as we know it due to catastrophic anthropological global warming - the blame, of course, is solely America's.

Air America spewed a daily dose of self loathing aimed squarely at fat, greedy Americans. While they never had much of an audience Air America was just an over the top version of many CNN, MSNBC and Comedy Central shows that do have audiences in the millions. Add the daily BDS (Bush Derangement Syndrome) symptoms coming out of the New York Times, the Washington Post and all the other big city newspapers, and is it any wonder Americans don't feel good about the future.

We all know that this so called good economy is only benefiting the rich and the oil companies. Four percent unemployment, low interest rates, booming businesses and a rising stock market are all Republican tricks designed to keep us fat and happy while we are being robbed blind.

When I take a look around I see my contemporaries living better and richer lives than their parents ever dreamed of at our age. And I say it's time to hold our chin up, it's not so bad.

Barone concludes with something we all know to be true because we see them coming here to join us and be like us from all corners of the world:

We've been instructed by many sages that the rest of the world hates us and does not want to follow our example. The [poll] numbers tell us something different.

Feeling funky? Not me, at least not today...



CW