The other night, while prepping for my class on the Anthropology of North America, StraightMan suggested that I read this Onion piece from 2004. I finally got around to it today. It hurt to read it. A lot. I did not laugh. At all.
Later, reading martinimade's QOTD made my day. I interpret it to mean that Jon Stewart agrees with me - or at least that I agree with him - about "sucks" being the new normal: Except that he calls it "shit taco".
1 in 7 Americans now live in poverty, defined as about $22,000 a year for a family for four. The Washington Post noted:
Since 2007, the year before the recession kicked into gear, the country has almost 4 million fewer wage-earners. There are more children growing up poor. And for the first time since the government began tracking health insurance in 1987, the number of people who have health coverage declined, as people lost jobs with health benefits or employers stopped offering it.
Those of us who are fortunate enough to remain employed on the one hand feel grateful, but on the other hand also insecure and uncertain. Not to mention overstretched in almost every domain, with pressure to do more with less at work and at home.
I suspect that expectations already had been increasing even before the economic downturn, which then becomes referenced as the reason to "explain" (or justify) so-called austerity measures, which become promoted as "temporary" and as "shared" sacrifice.
Or it just might be time to wake up and smell the shit taco.
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