Everyone is away

The 4th of July holiday was a great success.

Hundreds of thousands swarmed for music, food and fireworks and virtually no arrests, no outrageous violence and very little in the way of inconvenience.

It was a quintessential American weekend with nearly all of us taking full advantage of the Monday holiday.

Monday opened warm and very hot.

The heat was noticeable in the early morning.

The heat was noticeable everywhere.

During this first week of July, everyone is away.

If we are not physically elsewhere we are mentally in another space.

It is the dead of summer of 2010.

Everything is in front of us.

Everything is behind us.

We’re all heading to the beach.

We’re all heading in the other direction.

There is among many of us during this first major round of summer heat the national obsession about what the future holds.

Can the economy turn around?

Will the American economic model create new jobs, again?

Will the Gulf Coast be ruined forever by the worst oil spill in our history?

Are the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan going to be won?

Can they be won?

Are they already lost?

Cutting to the quick … will the absence of leadership during a crucial time in our national history be our ruination or will something come of it?

Will leadership be born out of necessity?

We hope so.

Will Americans come to a place in their minds where we are willing to sacrifice to conserve and to turn around the oil importation colossus robbing us of our free cash and burying us in debt?

Will there rise a leader and a Congress willing to act boldly to meet the challenges of the new world thrust upon us?

Will anyone speak and act honestly about the unsustainability of our economic existence under the present circumstances? Is the will to sacrifice apparent anywhere in this society of ours? Not really.

There are no profiles in courage out there during this, the dead of summer 2010.

There is not the national commitment to change – rather, the national commitment is to simply go along until we go broke before reordering our economic policies.

Again, everyone is away right now. Some are physically away. Others are mentally away.

Wherever we are, all of us are away.