Above all, our citizens were betrayed by the sense of security that had been cultivated for decades -- that they need not worry, that when the time came, the state would come to the rescue. Even as we discovered repeatedly that this was an illusion -- that the state was either incompetent or cruel or indifferent -- we maintained the hope that some kind god would protect us. Now we fear everything: that neither our health system, nor our pensions, nor our deposits are safe. The old social contract does not apply. On the issue of pensions alone, we see that those who paid dutifully all their lives are those who are suffering the greatest losses.So much for the politics of compassion.
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Sunday, January 08, 2012
What The End Of The Progressive Dream Looks Like
(Some of) The Greeks are starting to get it. In a commentary looking forward into 2012 at ekathimerini.com, is this paragraph.
great find. there are greeks who get it. who knew?
ReplyDeleteIt's contagious, too:
ReplyDeleteReuters: "'If there is not the will to give Greece a massive amount of money from European structural funds, I do not see any other solution than its departure from the euro zone and a massive devaluation of the new Greek currency,' [Czech central bank Governor Miroslav Singer] said in the interview to be published on Monday."
The end of the Progressive dream is the collapse of an approximately Gaussian economic distribution into two nonoverlapping distributions.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
--- WB Yeats