It's the Little Ironies

Every second Wednesday, Denver tests its Emergency Preparedness sirens -- I am listening to them now -- in an effort, I guess, to make sure we're prepared for... What?

When I was a kid, those sirens put the fear of God and the Ruskies in us. I remember we had several school-wide practice runs of evacuating the city where we'd all be assigned to a particular teacher's car for the ride into the Colorado Rockies where, surely, it was impossible for nuclear warheads to find us. We'd get in the teacher's car, sit there for ten minutes and then get out and go back to class. That evacuation scenario, coupled with the duck and cover (crawl under your desk and cover you head) method of surviving a nuclear attack comforted us mightily in those years of innocence. I wonder if our teachers thought it was all so much nonsense? Probably.

But, in those days, who could doubt the wisdom of the fatherly Ike (Dwight David Eisenhower) who was everyone's grandfather; who had fought the good fight overseas and had come back to protect us all from the evil commies lurking around every corner ... each and every one of them toting a nuclear warhead.

Now, as the sirens wind down their eerie howl, I'm thinking, Well, so much for homeland security. Tom Ridge and his bureaucracy can't even protect us from the flu, much less ... What? God, how many thousands of possible scenarios for the destruction of the American Way can you think of? Planes into buildings; contamination of our water supply; mailing ricin to ... well, anybody; nuts with nukes. God, I'm scaring myself. And, AND, we don't even have duck and cover drills anymore.

What might even be a little more scary is that China and Japan own $1.8 Trillion of our national debt. Think about it: the tax cuts ol' Dumbya came up with -- most of which went to the wealthiest 1% of Americans -- are being financed by us borrowing the money from China and Japan to, yes, pay for the tax cuts. That make sense to you?

Oh well... It's the little ironies; the little incongruities that keep life interesting.