Stephen Colbert likes to ask his guests that question.
Click on yahoo.com or msn.com at any given moment and they'll tell you. Tonight, right now, it's: Economic Worries All Over the World, World Powers Seek to Control Europe Debt Crisis, BofA settlement pushes up home default notices, and Wildfire Threat. Every other day, every other business day anyway, it's that the stock market is plummeting because someone is afraid something is going to happen. It used to be color coded terror threats. Now it's bed bugs. Bed bugs, and grocery stores trying to trick me into buying something that a blogger thinks I don't need. Oh and did you know that the recession turned suburbanite lazy people into pragmatists?
While I am it, since when did the words European, Iraqi, Greek, and Egyptian disappear from the English language? It's like people have forgotten what adjectives associated with countries are.
I don't think we're going to get through to the media, any of it, conservative, liberal, or computers that churn out the next big thing based on an algorithm, so it's up to us. This lemming like fear is what is paralyzing this country. The sky is not falling. If the government asks corporations to pay taxes, they're going to keep on making money so they can keep making money. It's counter-intuitive to think that anything is going to happen if my employer's tax rate goes up besides her telling us to sell more insurance. Oh, I might have to glue together a few more of the old chairs we've been slowing replacing (particle board is awful) for a little bit longer, but it won't kill anyone.
Bed bugs, while they might leave a nasty welt on your skin, are not going to kill you. It is not worth worrying about. An entire industry has grown up around the fear of nasty bugs... and it's just stupid. From what I can see, Wall Street (which still owes all of us an apology) crapping its' collective pants is what keeps making the stock market so volatile.
There are some things that thinking about it too much makes happen. Friends drifting away, for example. Worrying about that, and needling them, or preemptively cutting off ties is a self full filling prophecy. Every little odd thing your body does not mean you have a new disorder. Take enough drugs, and you'll get a few. Work piling up. Money never coming in. Worrying about it doesn't do anyone any good!
Do something. Can't never did anything. Stop making excuses. Stop being afraid. Do something. "Perfect love casts out fear." God is not going to stop loving us. Fear is paralyzing. So take up your mat and walk.
The next time you suspect that the news is reporting on stupid crap so they can get you upset and get better ratings? Turn it off.
We're never going to get out of this recession that's not a recession until we stop crapping our pants as a nation and get back to work. We can do it! This is the United States of America, for God's sake, not some sniveling pile of self pitying some or other whining about bygone former glory.
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