The sad and sorry events that conglomerate to make up The Great Recession are not remote or removed from us. They are not hypothetical or academic. They are happening to me, to you, to people we love and know and meet. This is--ultimate irony-- an illiberal and unprejudiced set of setbacks; open to all comers, the just and the unjust alike. Doesn't that make it just so impossible to grasp the rationale behind policies and pronouncements from the reactionary right?! I'm almost speechless, but only almost. A couple of personal stories and a well-earned award--just got to get these off my chest.
The first thing a young man of my distant acquaintance found in his brand new mailbox during his first orientation week at college in late '90's was an application for a credit card--Holy Magic Crap, free money! The Grail. College definitely had the shit beat out of high school. He hid the application away in a drawer under his new Abercrombie boxer shorts for a few days, pondering whether to ask his parents about it or even whether it was safe to handle. He took it out once and filled in the information blanks, then put it away. He took it out again and signed on the bottom line; the card company only asked for his signature--could that be right?--and hid it away again. There was the fine print, the interest rate, but those numbers had no meaning yet. Finally, he queried some of the less obviously insane freshmen on his dorm hall, and heard, "Dude, you haven't sent yours in yet?! Mine's already come. My roommate got an application at a booth at orientation. Check it out!"
