Vic Socotra

10 February 2009

No Time for Fear

My apologies. The proposal season is eating me up. For those of you in the business, you know. I20stopped typing around ten last night when I could no longer see, and was pecking away again before five this morning, before the coffee kicked in. I have no idea what the technical writers will think when they get my copy.

Anyway, that is why there is no polished story, no insightful snide comments about the press conference last night. No pseudo-profound remarks on the parallels between FDR and the young man from Illinois via Hawaii and Djakarta. I thought he looked good, and his professorial demeanor is less irritating than the inarticulate grimacing of our former Chief. I expect we will tire of it, though.

I did not know quite what to make of it. Are we in a panic now? It would appear to be so. The President was dismissive of the Republicans who got us into this mess, though as far as I can see, the policies that created the debacle were thoroughly bipartisan, more so than the response, and saying that Bush II ran up a trillion in the deficit in eight years with two wars is not quite the same as running up $820 billion later today.

I don't know as much as I pretend about the intricacies of state, but I do recognize a trend when I see one.

it is interesting that things move so ponderously in the midst of such frantic lives. The crisis is not at all what one expects in this age of instant communication.

I've tried to get this straight in my mind. We need the Chinese to buy all these T-bills to finance the stimulus package, right? And they are going to play along because....we are all interconnected?

I can understand the resurgence of protectionism and economic nationalism. We have talked about weird old dusty things like Smoot-Hawley and how it nearly destroyed20the West. Wait a minute; it made inevitable WW II which actually did destroy the West, at least as it existing in the tottering moment before the fall of all the old empires, and the emergence of the two new ones, the USSR and U.S.

I honestly don't know what to think anymore. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to live as an American at the zenith. Now, let the games begin.

Cordwainer Smith had a quote that seems eerily relevant. That was a pseudonym used by Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger for his fiction. Paul was a mystic, scholar, a diplomat, a spy, military man, science fiction author and general raconteur. He may have said it best. "This is no time for fear. It is too interesting."

And remember, he died in 1966.

Vic

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