Should ‘Waste’ Money
At Home
S.Q. Lapius usually
discouraged interruptions while he was reading, but this time he put down the
paper and pushed his bifocals high on his forehead to acknowledge the
expletives I had blurted out about
Cambodia.
“Wow, this business in
Phnom Penh blows my mind, Simon. Can you imagine? The Khmer Rouge
has evacuated the city, driven everybody back to the land to eke out an
agrarian existence. They have disavowed the city. It is
uninhabited, and will be reclaimed by the jungle, like Angkor Wat, or like the
Mayan ruins.”
“Perhaps,” Lapius mused,
“It will be rediscovered five hundred years hence by some diligent
archeologists, who will wonder why the civilization disappeared. This of
course may be the clue to the ‘disappearance’ of the Mayans and Aztecs.
Perhaps great civilizations never really die out but only the products of the
civilization, such as their cities and shrines are given up, while the people
disperse to the countryside. The leadership, the cultural political nexus
somehow disbands, is overthrown, or simply becomes fatigued and calls it quits,
so that the social structure collapses.”
“It sure is mind
boggling, though. I can’t get over it.”
Lapius wrinkled his nose, as he always did
when I used modern jargon to express an emotion which he thought should better
be described in traditional English. “Mind boggling?” he asked.
“Yes, it boggles the
mind,” I explained.
“Ugh,” he said
disdainfully. “Well, yes, Harry, it is astonishing.”
“Suppose,” I said.
“our government suddenly decided that it did not need Cleveland or Philadelphia
anymore, and distributed the population of either of these cities to the
countryside. That would be fantastic, wouldn’t it?”
“I would have thought so
a few weeks ago, Harry, but now I am not so sure. It seems that we have
learned a lesson from Cambodia. Shortly after the evacuation of Phnom
Penh Mayor Beame requested a billion or so dollars from the federal government
to help meet the payroll, and President Ford sent him a ‘Dear Abe’ letter
denying the funds, and then Secretary of the Treasury Simon said that if New
York defaulted on its debts, failed to pay interest on its bonds, and was
unable to meet its salaries, it would cause only a minor ripple in the
financial markets of the nation. Apparently the administration has decided to
divest itself of New York City. The philosophy of the Khmer Rouge was not
lost on our leaders in Washington. Except they are less considerate than
the new Cambodian leadership. The Khmer Rouge drove everyone out of the
city at bayonet point, but at least they will have the opportunity to try to
carve out subsistence on the land. You know, grow a vegetable
garden. But our leaders are less solicitous. They are willing to
let the city die with the people still in it.”
“I never thought of it
that way,” I admitted, “But surely New York will find financing somewhere, and
be able to rejoin the union.”
“Perhaps,” Lapius said,
“but perhaps it is turning out that our government is becoming an enemy of the
people. It adopts somewhat ruthless measures to keep down the medical
expenses of Americans, prohibits construction of new hospitals by communities,
worries about waste in health care, fails to feed its own citizens in a
satisfactory manner, since it seems many of them are buying dog food, and yet
is terribly concerned about the living standard of people abroad. Perhaps
if we would attend our cities, our farms, and ‘waste’ our money at home, there
would be less need to waste it abroad.”
“You are in a particularly
somber mood today, Simon,” I said.
“Yes, just realizing as
I have, that while we were Vietnamizing Vietnam, we were being Cambodianized.”