just a thought

One thought leads to another. Cynthia wrote an interesting piece on how well Cuba deals with emergency evacuations (like the one Katrina made necessary) compared with the US (or at least the powers, local and national, that attempted to evacuate New Orleans). I wrote a blog entry on my own coping with my own adversity at work. Writing the entry brought the word "malaise" to mind and of course also Jimmy Carter, a kind of hero to B and me. It turns out that Carter didn't say malaise, the word was put into his mouth by the press. He wrote about "the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation." Cynthia's comparison of a socialist nation and a free one, Carter's sense that the electorate lacks a sense of purpose, and, finally, Emerson's eloquence on shouldering our own burdens in "Self Reliance" led me round to a recurrent worry about the gullibility of Americans -- those who think the imperfect Republicans are better than the imperfect Democrats, to be exact.

Nick blogs about the imperfections of politicians from another point of view.

Just a thought.