Ira Kortum:Slippery slope, covered in oil

Where did it all go wrong? Schools, government, state government, health care and the list goes on and on. We all voted in accordance (hopefully) with what we thought were the most responsible and best decisions, and yet it all looks to be falling to ruin. Schools are failing with a very quickly coming teacher strike just around the corner. The government just made a decision to make more tax cuts, which means even less money for programs of assistance that are so horribly underfunded and falling apart that they’re not doing much good anyway. (Physically or mentally handicapped? Beaten, molested, neglected or abused child? Hey, life sucks, get a helmet.)

The state government’s philosophy with the court system seems to be to put off minor crimes like trespass, certain levels of assault and misdemeanor stuff for half a year and then take everything on at once, past cases as well as current, with half the workforce.

Healthcare? What we had once upon a time was OK, but now as with everything else it’s falling apart, crumbling to nothing bit by bit. Even the French, the FRENCH, have universal healthcare.

Ever read Asimov’s “The Foundation Trilogy?”

The signs are everywhere. They’re right in our faces, and yet nothing is done. It’s all on a slippery slope and it has gained too much inertia to be stopped. Go outside, go on, go ahead. Go outside and watch the cars pass by and answer me this: Why is it that two out of every three white Ford Expeditions are driven by blond-haired soccer moms with one or maybe even two baby seats in the back? Even in half a second you can tell it has never been off-road, or on a dirt road or even seen a dirt road. Most people don’t buy SUVs to drive them off-road, or because they carry around a ton of people, or because they do a lot of utility work, but because they’re a status symbol.

Where’s this going? If people who need SUVs or large vehicles didn’t buy SUVs or large vehicles but more practical cars, ones that got better than 12 miles per gallon, we could cut our oil use by as much as 30 percent – which would go a long way to getting us off foreign oil.

How many SUVs do you see flying the American flag? Or bearing stickers saying “Sept. 11, never forget”? Quite a number of them are around, especially, of course, after Sept. 11. Yet, no one seems to be bothered by the irony or the fact that one of the primary ways the attack of Sept. 11 was funded wasn’t in drug trade or in hidden accounts, but by the production of and selling of oil!

Because of our gluttonous and unnecessary need for gas, we helped fund a terrorist attack upon ourselves.

Come on, people, we can find enough dedicated people to go and get funds for the Walk of Heroines, to build new buildings like the new Birmingham or the Native American center, refurbish the Smith Center and its cafeteria, and yet no one seems to be able to find enough money to keep this school from losing its non-tenured teachers.

The end is nigh, the precipice in sight, and it seems we’re all more interested in seeing the train wreck and its aftermath than in trying to stop it.

God help us all.