The Red Flag

The recent failure of the U.S. governing class to understand that the immediate (i.e. next decade's) problems are not those of debts and deficits but of jobs and joblessness make the recent news from London something of a nasty reminder of what happens when a substantial portion of your working-age population ends up jobless for long periods of time.I think we need to remember that we are not Japan. Young American men (and women) without a job are not going to behave well for long. Why bother? What is there to lose? In the U.S. you ARE your job. And if you have no job, how much do you have? Freedom? You have the freedom to lay about, eat junk food, and do squat. As much as that might have appealed to me at age 14 for about three weeks, spending the bulk of my twenties or thirties...or fifties...doing that?



I'd probably go out and loot a 7-11, too.No question that we will have to grapple with the question of how much the U.S. governments need to take in and how much they need to spend. But before we do that we need to get through the next stage of the Great Recession (can we start calling it a Depression yet?) without finding a sizeable chunk of our population out of work and on the dole. Because that's not a good thing for them, it's not a good thing for us, and it's not a good thing for the country.There's a reason that that crafty old patrician FDR and his New Deal pals didn't just push through stuff like Social Security and unemployment insurance but created a bunch of make-work agencies; things like the CCC and WPA and the big government construction projects were a smart reaction from people who were watching what the Soviets and Italian Fascists were doing with their young people - stuffing them into armies and "labor corps" and other make-work jobs. Things like the Bonneville Dam and the CCC kept idle hands from becoming devils' playgrounds...and idle brains from getting stuffed with fascist or communist ideas. Those New Deal guys knew that having a bunch of working - i.e. military - age guys just hanging around with nothing to do was a hell of a good way to start trouble.



I'm not sure if we need a new CCC. But I'm hella sure that we don't need a bunch of stuffed hairbags in DC gassing on about the Terror of Deficits when 10% and probably more of the U.S. public is out of work and stands to be for a long, long time, at this rate.



Because despite what they tell you on TV; were not that much smarter, or better behaved, than we were in 1932. And now, as then, as the London Council is finding out...if we don't figure out how to get those guys back to work or find something for them to do, they'll find it themselves, and the rest of us might not like it."I'm out of work and on the dole,

You can stuff the red flag up your hole."

Lost Villages

A rather fascinating story here about Little Imber on Down, a country village in the English county of Wiltshire.Or perhaps I should say a former country village.

Because, you see, in November, 1943, the hundred-odd residents of the little town were called together for what they thought was a meeting about the installation of domestic plumbing and were informed that the British Ministry of Defence intended to use the village for training in fighting in built-up areas. They had only 47 days to leave, but left with the impression that after the training was done the village would be returned to them. The story is that people left food in their homes for the soldiers, sad to go but willing to "do their bit" to help win the war.The only way any of the people of Imber returned was to be buried in the churchyard.

I really find this a very grayish sort of story. The people of Imber lost their little village forever - and the training is said to have been canceled, making that loss even more heartbreaking.But nations need armies, and armies need training, and training needs land to do it in. Britain doesn't have the luxury we have of vast areas where sane people don't want to go, like NTC and JRTC.

Or the sand hills of Ft. Bragg, when you come right down to it.And 1943 was a desperate time, and sometimes desperate times DO call for desperate measures.

Let's also not forget that without the protection afforded the land by the training area Salisbury Plain would very likely be overrun with the sort of strip malls and housing tracts we tend to uglify our own rural areas with. The training area is one of the last large wild areas in Wiltshire, and it's only because the MoD keeps people out for its own selfish reasons. The question of whether or not the original village would have been "lost", one way or another...well, let's just say that the MoD isn't the out-and-out bad guy here.

So I guess I'm saying that the story of the lost village of Imber isn't a fable with a moral at the end, or a melodrama with a Hero and a Villian, but rather a cautionary tale that in the exigencies of wars and of the rumors of wars sometimes we do what we think we have to - whether we have to or not - to win them. And once done, we cannot or often will not undo them.

And then History sweeps past, in its great and merciless fashion, leaving us with our small lives changed all out of recognition, sometimes for the better, sometimes broken beyond repair.And Imber stands, still empty, on a darkling plain.

(Huge h/t to Karen Traviss, whose writing I adore and whose blog I shamelessly stole this topic from. Go out and buy one of her books - I'm serious, man!)