Sure Don’t Feel Like No Depression

by Nathan Walpow

I live an insular life. Most of the people I know are urban, middle class, left of center, and somewhat snarky. Especially since I started working at home, I don’t have a lot of contact with people of other income levels, other political views, other anything.

But still. I do make it out of the house once in a while. I go to the dentist, I cruise the aisles at Home Depot, I venture out to the movies. So I’m able to form an opinion about something, no matter how skewed that opinion is. And the opinion is this: it doesn’t feel like we’re in the worst economic crisis since the Depression.

I mean, people are talking about it, sure. Talking about it ad nauseam, for that matter. People on the street, and people on the TV, and whoever’s managed to hang on at the L.A. Times. But I don’t sense any desperation. I don’t sense any feeling that the sky is falling, that our civilization is tumbling down around us, that we’re going to be standing in breadlines soon.

Maybe it’s denial. Maybe it’s a sense that, if we could get through eight years of George W. Bush, we can get through anything. Maybe it’s that we’re so sick of our parents and grandparents griping about how terrible the Depression was that we simply reject the chance that another may descend upon us. Maybe the country’s simply so under the thrall of President Obama (first time I’ve written that—wheeee!) that its citizens are unable to believe he won’t make things all better.

Or maybe I just need to go spend time somewhere else. Somewhere people are hurting. Somewhere those 60,000 jobs lost in one day earlier this week have an effect. Then maybe I’ll feel like things are crappy.

Will I do that? Of course not. Like I said, I live an insular life. And I like it that way.

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