Our Despair

I recall that in "The Magnificent Seven", Charles Bronson's character attracts a few youthful admirers while defending a Mexican village from bandits. The kids resent their parents, but Bronson admonishes them, talking about the nobility of their actions. He tells the kids how the responsibility of being a provider weighs on the parents like a heavy rock, and how it eventually drives them into the ground.

That last part is what I'm getting at, only it's not responsibility that feels like it's driving us into the ground. It's not even as positive as that. It's more as if it's brutal despair that weighs on us every day. Every day, more jobs bleed out of the economy, and our national self sags and totters and reels. Japan played that out all through the 90s, and we can only hope to pull out of it before it gets to that point.

I hope that we have the fortitude to do so. We have before, many times. The only time it was worse than this, though, it took a war that engulfed the world. I don't foresee something like that saving us again, so we're going to have to do it for ourselves this time.