Why This Pervasive Sense of Doom?

On the train home from work last night, reading an article on the collapse of honeybee colonies (Dady Chery, The Bee’s Vanishing Act), I realized why it is there is this pervasive sense of doom that shrouds everything these days. No longer as a society do we structure in -- acknowledge the merit of -- repose.

Formerly in the United States there was a widely shared cultural vision of the importance -- the justice and fairness -- of a secure retirement. One would toil his or her heart and soul away, kissing youth goodbye, at a job(s), usually dehumanizing, with the promise that eventually one would get to relax for maybe a decade or two of dotage.

At the beginning of this year when the Boeing Machinists approved, following threats by the employer (backed by politicians elected by means of union support), an end to their defined-benefit pension, a line was crossed. The palm at the end of the American mind -- retirement with a good defined-benefit pension -- has been chopped down.

The Great Recession knocked my union's pension plan into the red. One of the moves the plan trustees made to get back into the black was to abolish "the rule of 80." The rule of 80 states that once a plan participant hits age 55, any years of credited service in the plan plus the participant's age that add up to 80 or more allows the participant to retire early with full benefits. In other words, the "gold standard."

My idea was to be done with the rat race by 59. That is what it would take me under the rule of 80. I would retire to California and spend the remainder of my days reading books I want to read -- on ancient Egypt, Big Foot, Robert Caro's LBJ opus -- and jogging beneath an orange sun.

But shortly after the Lehman meltdown, the rule of 80 was rescinded and so was the daydream of freeing myself at 59.

It is war all the time. That is what it is. And that is what I realized sitting on the train last night. The Hobbesian state of nature, the war of all against all, which supposedly motivates us to come together and form a society, is actually the basis of our culture now. And no better representative of this is the Grand Old Party, an absolutely contrived diabolical corporate machination designed solely to expand the prerogatives of the super-rich. That the Democrats have been beaten repeatedly by these soulless ghouls proves that they are no better.

Bear this in mind next week or next month when Obama announces his immigration plan. That plan was rolled out by the Gray Lady yesterday, "Obama Plan May Allow Millions of Immigrants to Stay and Work in U.S.," as part of the post-midterm debacle counterattack that the administration has skillfully put forth -- along with net neutrality and the China carbon-reduction accord -- to mobilize its broader base of support.

Republican leadership is talking tough, even going so far as to mention the possibility of a government shutdown if Obama extends protections to millions of undocumented immigrants. The Tea Party will be stirred up. No doubt there will be angry rallies of white people with rifles held aloft.

The optics favor the Democrats. It's a good political move by Obama. It empowers the knuckle-draggers in the GOP and accentuates the fissure with the Chamber of Commerce Rovian brain trust, who favor an immigration deal.

In the end, if past iterations of Potomac Armaggedon are a guide, a deal will be cut, and that deal will likely be one which sells the undocumented down the river.

But maybe the GOP's pandering to Dixiecrat nativism will finally bust the seams of the party. We can only hope. It is doubtful though.

Which leaves us only the repose offered by the mind. For me, now, it is the idea that this weekend I will watch football on television while eating an entire bag of clementine oranges.