When it Comes to This Cheese, Y'all Like 3 Blind Mice

In some cultures, you become an adult when your family throws you a gigantic expensive theme party when you turn 13. In others, you're only grown up after you get ritualistically scarred. And there are those, when to truly be a full-fledged man or woman, you are taken into the middle of the wilderness and left to fend yourself.

In today's capatalist Western culture, though, you truly become an adult once you learn that the authority figures who reign over you have absolutely no clue what they're doing. You become a man or a woman when you understand that those in power are just like you; totally overwhelmed and completely in over their heads.

So, today, September 14, 2008, the United States of America truly, finally, mercifully, has become an adult. With the Lehman Bros. bankruptcy, the sale of Merril Lynch, the problems with AIG and Washington Mutual, it now has to be clear to every American, smart and dumb, rich and poor, majority and minority, that the government and the Wall Street overlords have completely miscalculated on a number of fronts. I'm in no position to say whether these are small or large miscalculations, but it hardly matters. Miscalculating by a fraction of a percentage point on billions of dollars of mortgages is more than enough to send the world markets off into a downward spiral. Or something.

Of course, maybe a similar awakening happened during the Savings and Loans Crisis, the Great Depression or the Panic of 1837.



I can't really say. But, for the younger generation of Americans, who have all grown up believing that one day we'll be naked and famous, well, it's time to stop hitting the snooze button.

There could be a couple of silver linings in all of this, though.

I remember, way back in the day, reading an interview with Noel Gallagher where he described the physical abuse he endured, as a child, at the hands of his father.



As he put it, when you're lying on the ground after being beaten up by your dad and you're still alive, it's a freeing and life-affirming feeling. You've been terribly hurt by the person who's supposed to protect you. It can only get better from there. I trust that we're all following this methapor, so I'll move on.

Second, as bad as this crisis continues to get for many Americans, it's important to remember that we still have a lot of food, water and shelter. Seriously, to survive, that's really all you need. You don't need SUVs, plasma TVs, PDAs, big houses. You just need basic sustenance. There's no problem with that in the good old USA.

Just imagine Bear Grylls parachuting down into an abandoned and money-less Middle America and having to forage for food and water.



It would be about a ten-minute Man vs. Wild. He'd come across a deli or grocery store within an hour or so of walking and, boom, there'd be bread, fruit, vegetables, juice, water and a roof over his head.



Anyone with any basic human survival skills would be able to survive for years on just one deli or grocey store. And there are tens of thousands of these all over the country that could each provide shelter for several families.

So, yeah, there's a very good chance an entire class of professionals will have their jobs and livelihoods totally eliminated in the next year or so. But as long as we got delis and grocery stores, there's really not too much to worry about.

Mazel tov, America!

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