The Way We Live Now: being proven wrong. It doesn't do much for our self-esteem, but then again, self-esteem and a buck fifty will get you a cup of coffee these days. And a buck fifty's nowhere to be found.

Okay, so, we thought that the ban on oil drilling in the Gulf would totally devastate the economy down there and guess what, it didn't. So, sue us. We work for oil companies, what do you want from us?

Forgiveness. That is what we, as Americans, all desire from one another. We can do a brisk business forgiving each other for our various sins, for cash. Let's take, I don't know, our nation's war follies, for example. Turns out that, at least by librul calculations, it was a monstrous waste of hundreds of billions of dollars as well as thousands upon thousands of live. Okay! Whoops! We're sorry! Jesus, we thought it would work out. It didn't. Let's move on.

With forgiveness! It's no good to move on and everyone's mad about things. So we messed up. It happens. It's not like we miscalculated state pension obligations to the tune of $3 trillion. Okay, we did that too. But it's not like we were so irresponsible with money that we caused our police forces to cut back to the point that they can't even respond to burglary or theft calls because they have to focus on the shootings.

Oh—yes we did. That one, we did. That's right. Sorry. Mix up.

So for those and everything else, you forgive us, and we'll forgive you, and we'll call it all even. Okay? Okay. Because we have another shit show coming down Wall Street right now. Let's start this one with a clean slate!

[Photo via Shutterstock.com]