Fukishima, Mon Amour

I used to ride my bicycle down to this place on weekends.

Whenever I despaired of the state of the nation, it was reassuring to look up at the Capitol building and recall that however bleak the presence of Rush Limbaugh ranting like some mad Goebbels, leading his pack of hyenas, as Lincoln said, "This too, shall pass.

We may be in trying times, because we have hit a bad skid in the economic cycle. But this is not the Great Depression.

Rush Limbaugh is a howling jackal, but he's no worse than Joseph McCarthy, and in fact, he has less effect than McCarthy, at his peak, had.The grid lock in Congress today is bad, and has paralyzed that dysfunctional body, but they are not arguing over slavery. Senators are not bludgeoning each other on the Senate floor, although this may be only because of increased security.

Jihadists of various sorts may wish us ill, but we lived for 50 years with Soviets who had thousands of nuclear bomb ladened missiles hungering for our vital organs.
We are, in short, in a place which is no worse than we have found ourselves in the past
In fact, the most worrisome worries may not actually be related to Rush Limbaugh, or some anonymous jihadist with a nuclear bomb in his backpack, or a Bible thumping Santori who wants to turn the United States into a Christian version of Iran, ruled by the Christian version of Sharia law, it may be the quiet sort of threat, like the pestilences of the past, like plague and polio, which are invisible, below the notice of the general public. It may be the nuclear plant next door.

Fukishima was a year ago and a few Jerimiah's are pointing out we have insufficiently safety controls on our plants. Fires which can burn through wires which run to machines which are the only things standing between the neighboring communities and meltdown are a more likely source of disaster and end game than anything Rush Limbaugh is warning about. And the risk posed by the nuclear plant strikes me as more worrisome because we cannot know how safe or unsafe these fortresses are. We can only guess, and we can know the reason they would be unsafe would be money. The regulators are in the pocket of the industry and the industry cares only for profit.
Lincoln, FDR, those who fought McCarthy and even JFK facing the nuclear armed Soviet Union did not have to worry about a disaster exploding from within because of a few people who were simply lazy, incompetent or afraid to make a fuss over a disaster waiting to happen. Those are the sorts of human weaknesses I can believe in.