This Time

I see the light! All these years running my business, those 50 and 60 hour weeks for a couple of decades, weren't enough, because my spirit wasn't pure. Unlike that CEO who gave away 60 million to his employees and ex-employees, I sought my own self aggrandizement; my own personal riches. And it was that spirit, the pre-Obama spirit, that 'decades of greed and selfishness' spirit that has held this country back; that has held my business back. Starting tomorrow, I'll no longer make decisions without consulting all my employees and taking a vote. Starting tomorrow, we'll do away with performance based compensation and instead split up all the profits equally. Starting tomorrow I'll show real courage and contrition and ask the government for help providing health care for my employees which we previously funded ourselves. And I won't quit asking until the government provides it affordably and of high quality! And I'll just keep asking and asking for help until we get it because we Americans are not quitters! How could I have been so vainglorious to think I could provide for myself, my family and my employees! Starting tomorrow, I'll consult the local municipal and state governments about how to invest my profits to expand my business with the hopes of forming a private/public partnership. Clearly we private business people are spiritually tainted and defiled by years and years of seeking only short-term gain instead of planning long-term. Actually, we're nothing more than capitalist, gun-toting cowboys; a hopeless historical anachronism. I think I'd better check to make sure that my business even belongs in this new master plan for our economy; this new green economy that this administration has been bequeathed with the wisdom to create. Just what is my carbon footprint? Maybe our time is over. Maybe it would be best thing for everyone if I just liquidated? How was I so blind not to see that for the whole history of our country, up to 'this time', the majority of Amerikind has been pursuing the wrong goals with the wrong spirit and without the requisite moral oversight which, at long last, we finally have - the leadership, the moral compass, the vision to take us to the promised land! Did I hear tonight that we're finally going to cure cancer? What's so deeply puzzling for me, however, is how could we Americans have created the most prosperous, resilient, successful, multiethnically tolerant, pluralist society in the history of the earth all before 'this time', in spite of all our faults.

Is there some sort of ecological confessional where I can go to absolve myself? I failed to recycle some newpapers and cans last month....