Can We Get Serious?

Lately my friend Hagrid keeps sending me stuff about the impending collapse of the monetary system. “Buy Gold” he tells me between stories about the gas station that sells gasoline at the old prices if you’re willing to pay with pre-1965 silver coins. Apparently Hagrid has a bunch of those too. Naturally, Hagrid keeps all his gold in a vault at the Gringott’s bank where it’s all guarded by goblins. In the meantime, I’ve told him that if it’s going to get that bad, you don’t want gold you want guns and an endless supply of bottled water and canned goods in your personal underground bunker. My mom and step-dad went to Peru a few months back. A bunch of the wealthy Chinese there had done exactly that when the Shining Path was threatening to tear apart the country several years back. They still had bunkers with wells drilled directly underneath them. I just couldn’t ever live that way. Hagrid’s response would naturally be, we may just have to sooner than you think.

In the meantime, I just spent the last week listening to presidential campaign stories where the news has been about who played the race card first and something about an ad with Paris Hilton and Obama pasted into the same image (see the campaign against Harold Ford). Yes, some of this has to do with the increasing influence of Steve Schmidt, something of a Karl Rove protégé, in the McCain campaign. We seem to be looking at four very serious issues. There’s the economic crisis, the war, the environment, and health care. The four interrelate in any number of ways, but either the media isn’t covering it (a real possibility) or the two campaigns aren’t doing much to let America know that they’re serious about all of these matters. In particular, the McCain stump answers, “Yes, we’re winning the war” and “We need to lower taxes further” appear especially irresponsible. For one, I'd like to see candidate McCain define "Win" and the acceptable price for winning in that way. I'm inclined to believe that Paris Hilton actually does have deeper more thoughtful ideas about both the war and the economy than John McCain.

As much as I like and respect my friend Hagrid (he’s a bright guy who does study this stuff pretty carefully, though) , it scares me that he’s more willing to talk about this stuff seriously than the people covering the presidential race or the candidates themselves.