"Shit Happens" & "Whatever" decades

I was in the Uptown area, going to the hardware store, and had been listening to a program on President Reagan's advice not to be concerned about being out of work. Just take whatever money you have and go into business, the great American way ... free enterprise, the American dream of working for yourself. The week before he and the Congress had succeeded in doing away with some anti-capitalist legislation enacted in the thirties, to enable business to succeed better it was assumed.

As I parked I saw an old, beat up pickup truck with a bumpersticker which read "Shit Happens" (the first of many sightings over the years), and it brought up the political situation real quick. I greeted the father and daughters who ran the hardware store and they quickly gave me the news. Seems their lease was not being renewed, they were soon to be out of business, and a boutique would soon take their place. Their years of experience and huge knowledge was pushed aside for the shit happens decade. The boutique didn't last of course, nor did the trendy furniture store which replaced it. Now that whole end of the building is gone, and another series of businesses are on the horizon.

"Whatever." a close relative to "Shit Happens" is now the reining word, and is undoubtedly on bumpers as well. I think of the word when Bill Clinton comes up, but the "Gitmo" ethos of Bush and Cheney bring the shit happens ethic back with a vengence now and again. Obama is embroiled in an Orwellian word of war and peace and high finance & unemployment, duking it out with generals and the Pentagon, the Tea Party, Wall Street and the banks. What his primary bumper sticker will be is anyone's guess, whatever.