2009: Where to go from here
Alex Strickland
As I write this column on the verge of 2009, I suspect I speak for many in my assessment of the outgoing year: Good riddance to bad rubbish.
A staggering economy, layoffs, $4 a gallon gasoline, and an election season that made us want to collectively gouge out our national eyes. Yes, good-bye 2008. We hope not to see your ilk again for some time.
Which, of course, brings us to 2009. And for those unable to ignore the constant stream of babble coming from talking heads and the associated news media, the Year of the Ox looks like it might be a rough one. Experts give a gloomy economic forecast and the general feeling is that things will get worse before they get better.
The generally affluent community of Bigfork is no exception. No matter how big the houses on Flathead Lake are, there are still a bevy of vacant commercial buildings in town and if rumblings from many retailers are true, there could be more on the way. It’s highly likely that even Bigfork’s most extravagantly rich residents (and there are some, believe me) have seen their investments battered along with the rest of us.
America spent much of 2008 whining about how bad things were, and not unfairly. Our titans of industry cried to the government, which showed frighteningly little hesitation in reaching into our pocketbooks to provide these ailing businesses with huge sums of money.
And it all seemed slightly un-American.
It isn’t like America to partially nationalize entire sectors of the economy. It isn’t like America to whine about tough times and unfair breaks. At the risk of going all Rush Limbaugh here, it seems, well, kind of French.
The last 12 months have been an extension of the last seven years, since the towers fell in New York. We have — whether by fault of politicians or the media or whatever else, I won’t judge here — become a timid, worrying and fearful nation. We are, at the close of 2008, a distrusting, xenophobic group. We see things in black and white, which, we should have been all taught by our mothers, is not how the world is painted.
The world is gray. And for the last 200 or so years, that has worked to the great advantage of America and those of us lucky enough to live here. Fortune, as Virgil wrote, favors the brave. And Americans are brave people.
Many people on both sides of the aisle will be quick to credit or blame Barack Obama for our goods or ills in 2009, just as many have done for the past eight with George W. Bush. We have become overly reliant on politicians in defining our national identity, and if you’ll permit the use of another quote from someone smarter than I: “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
My New Years resolutions for 2009? Think hard before I speak. Do my due diligence when forming an opinion, then act. Not in a rush, but swiftly and decisively. Confident in my preparation and ready to accept the consequences, whether fortune or failure. In short, I will act as an American. Something far too few of us did in 2008.