And now, A Serious Moment - Upstairs Downstairs and the Fall of America.

Bear with me. I do have these spells of thought now and then.

I am an aficionado of those old British historical docudramas, like " Poldark" "Upstairs Downstairs" and the like. I've been watching 'Upstairs Downstairs' since the pulling of the white curtain across fair Wapakoneta Ohio, and I can't help but see similarities to the behavior of the characters and country at the time of The Bellamys and their servants, and the US now.

there are differences.. the British had at least a veneer of their powerful families being based on blood, not money, but scratch the surface, it was all about money. The Bellamys fell in social standing as their money became dissapated by the actions of their unruly children, James and Elizabeth, who, with a string of bad mating and marriages, alcholism, gambling and general debauchery, brought the family to the end of their stay at the fabled Eaton Place. They are a metaphor for what brought Britian down.

I can't help but see the similarities between the times they lived in and the times we are in now.
My generation and the one directly before me are a bunch of James's and Elizabeths. We challenged the existing order, we partied and sexed, we spent like wildfire and we are supposedly now teetering on the brink of disaster.

Well, some of us did.

And are we?

Yes, I am one of those nuts who is socking away some food for a rainy day. Is it because I think we are headed for a third world status? I had to laugh, when World War 1 was announced on Upstairs Downstairs, Mrs Bridges, the housekeeper, socked away a ton of food for the household. Now, she is a kind of apolitical cockney, sort of a conservative but childlike enough to believe if the Kaiser sent his Zepplins to bomb England, she could climb up to the roof and pop one with a hatpin. Her valliance made me think of the people who honestly believe they could take potshots at an invading force of UN soldiers and have an effect, live, should it come to that.

Then you have Mr Hudson's reaction. When the war first broke out, he subscrbed to a muckraking magazine that spread horror stories about the atrocities of the "Huns", and the household was hard put to tell which were truths and which were sensationalism.

What strikes me the most though is how the upsetting of the status quo, a loosening of man made constraints, has the effect of letting the cream rise to the top on its own volition, whether they are "Upstairs" or "Downstairs". I believe this is a natural consequence of Chaos. There is something to be said for the allowance of survival for the fittest, and destruction of a social order makes room for that. The Bellamy Cousin, Georginia, for example, rises above her rich, pampered girlhood to become a very capable nurse, something she would never have been allowed to do in peacetime.

So who are we now, are we James? Or Georgina? ( Never mind the two had a fatal attraction, that doesn't prove my point so we will ignore it haha)