Tuesday 3 February 2009

Won't get Fooled Again

Here, on my desk is a picture of the new boss--there was never a photo of the old boss in the office, that I keep forgetting to find a suitable frame for (it's of course printed on a shiny A-4 European-sized page, and government-issue frames are 8 1/2" by 11" and I can't bear to trim him to size), which has been there since the day after the inaugeration. I feel guardedly optimistic about the future of the economy and my own job security--I think maybe that ought to be the one constant but timorous bulwark of America, a reliably strong influence on trade and the markets, that and a beacon of freedom and liberty. Speaking of my own job security--without going into the details of keeping a standing army and other relics of the Cold War, day by day, I come to realize that the entity known as USAREUR (pronounced "use-a-rawr," the Army likes for its acronyms to be flubbed out loud) exists exclusively as a make-work program for those individuals in the witness protection program. Daily, as we reinvent the catch-22, I feel certain that that is the one rational explanation for the rampant illogic.