Good/Bad

It is possible, apparently, for an insolvent financial institution to better its fortunes by carving out its diseased parts from the functioning ones. What remains, then, is an operational "good bank," the health of which is beyond reproach, and a "bad bank," the gangrenous stench of which we choose to ignore until it goes away (we hope).

Why stop there? I think we can apply the concept to our nation with success. California and Florida, the epicenters of the real estate collapse, should be packaged away into a "bad country." Add Michigan, obviously; the stench of the dying auto industry is more than we can bear. Louisiana, if only for the noxious fumes coming out of its governor's mouth. South Dakota and its Badlands. New Jersey? Fuck you; it should be the jewel of our "good country."

Alas, our current troubles are global. Let us restore the health of this world by creating a good world and a bad world. Let's be quite granular in our distinctions, and very eclectic in our criteria. Laughing old ladies making buckets of kimchi in a backyard in Seoul: good. Piles of poop revealed on the sidewalk in the Upper West Side after the snow melts away on a slightly warmer winter day: bad. The knowledge that, at any given moment in time, people are doing it somewhere, and doing it out of something that resembles love: good. The sudden and unexpected reflective side revealed in a formerly douchebag-like classmate after his recent layoff: unclear.

And I should perhaps compartmentalize the bad parts of myself. What is on display, then, walking in your midst, will be the good, smiling, cordial but confident me, clearly thoughtful but transparent in my intentions, shaking hands, building a career, hanging with friends, petting dogs, and being nice to my family. And, when no one's looking, I will tend to a brooding, vengeful, fraudulent and petty me, the indecent motives of whom threaten to destroy the whole self unless repressed and hidden away. I don't know if it's possible to cleanly extract these things, but doing so -- sorting out the mess into bins, and passing judgment on each -- might me a better person, or at least a less entropic, and therefore more human, person.