My World View

Here is my latest finely crafted series of words designed to produce virtually no colloquy.

Preamble

I am stuck in a hard place in my outlook on American life right now. Maybe I'm too educated and should have just stayed stupid. Maybe I just want Johnny Carson and the Rat Pack back.

I have 3 years of food stored up, my vehicle is paid for, I have a decent job and I get to yammer into a camera a few times a week. Life is "sweet". There's just a few problems.

So here we are watching Wisconsin simmering. Like a pot of rice, the thing is likely to boil over if we're not careful. We in Michigan have the exact same problem. Problem is we have residents who haven't worked literally in years. There's nothing for them, there is no money. Done, it's over, the cash is gone, wasted away by the previous governor who refused to cut anything from the budget "for the children". It's the same story a few billion dollars at a time everywhere. It's the magic dollar bullet train to the future where windmills and puppy dogs for everyone drop from the marshmallow sky, powered of course, by solar panels that (oddly) keep your costs exactly the same to implement it.

On the one hand, it's paycheck to paycheck (yeah, my precious metals are gaining value and I could cash out for nice chunk of jingle) and there's no end to it.

Now I get to watch as my required Social Security payments grow and (one assumes) benefits become smaller and later. At 52, even now it's hard to go through the week for the weekend recovery of the body. Now they want another 20 years? I already consume medications to be able to function - just my small effort toward the contaminated water supply. And unless I'm some genetic freak of nature, I suspect that I'm not the only one. Save money? How? Spend my life downtrodden by choice so I can have some pie in my old age as a useless cripple waiting to end the misery? Sorry, it just isn't going to happen. Apparently the new goal is to drop dead at work.

An interesting class assignment:

Wander around and ask about taxes (tis the season). The mortgage interest credit, the auto registration credit, the child credit, the dependent credit. These are entitlements. Let me ask you a question. What is the interest rate you pay on your mortgage? If you said zero, you are exactly correct. The entitlement from the IRS gives it to you. I file the short form and take the standard deduction. I paid my taxes over the year and I don't need it back. It's one of the few real choices I feel like I have when it comes to my citizenship. I would be willing to actually wager cash on one simple fact: If the protesters demanding more from the rich get a tax "refund" they are not only hypocrites but liars, cheats and worthless malcontents that are in fact one fry short of a Happy Meal. Crap does not (believe it or not) fall out of the sky. Niribu, comets, meteors and moisture yes. Money and cool stuff, no.

Looking at the last two paragraphs, one would most certainly not be forgiven to accuse me of my own brand of entitlement. The problem is that I've been paying day after day for 35 years into an investment that was foisted upon me by generations past. Money that most certainly if invested by myself would make me feel a lot better about the fore mentioned self. That is not an entitlement. That is a failure of the owners of the corporation to manage the company correctly. As CEO's, we are miserable failures.

World View:

Here's my outlook. Our system works. It is well designed, well thought out and a tremendous gift to us. The problem is that the people that are politically running the country have committed a gross failure in their assigned task: Representation.

I'd like more money but money is simply a barter tool for property acquisition. That is all it is. Yet more and more citizens are running around yapping about wanting more. That's all nice and everything but in case you haven't noticed there is no more magic money. When you consider pointing out that in fact the rich have the money, see the second paragraph above this one and keep the pie hole closed. Besides, the guy at the Mercedes dealership would disagree as would the interior decorator, dry cleaner, grocery store, local municipality, as well as the employees at the boat dealer, college (of your choice), tailor, clothing store, airline, hotel, lawn care company, contractor(s), suppliers and if I missed you, my apology.

Conclusions:

Sure, we all felt good in November to finally get a handle on the situation and stop the self centered, next election boogie train to hell. Sadly, it turns out they've done nothing. Not a blessed thing. Betrayed by hope. Again.

I believe that revolution is not the answer unless the goal of that revolution is wipe that slate clean and reinstate the original concept. Sadly, there would be only one outcome. More of the same. It's always the best at "In your face" advertising and best organized that gets to jump ahead in the line of assumption of power. This time it sure looks like the burka wearing raised fist of power.

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Maybe the answer is no political ads. Ever. If you want a vote you get to hoof door to door. I can set you up with the correct medications when the pain gets too bad to continue.

Maybe the answer is one term only. And no, you're not going to run for governor. One term then get your butt back to work. The problem is implementing it. They won't vote for it in the government so we have to do it ourselves. And they won't let it on a ballot. Even if they do, the advertising money spent to prevent it would fund the entire world for years.

Maybe the answer is a new police force. Policing a brand new "lobbying treason" act.

Maybe the answer is a written contract: If you create a regulation that does not pass constitutional muster, 10 years prison, mandatory.

Maybe the answer is impeaching every one of them.

Maybe the answer is I think too much and should just have some more pie. I'd like that if it didn't just magically double in cost.

Well said,excellent rant,S&F for you.I couldn't agree with you more.I like your ideas about term limits and agree about the difficulty getting them implimented. I particularly like the idea about the ten year term for a bill not passing constitutional muster.
How about we do away with all the lawyers as politicians.Seems that they want to get into office to get rich off the graft provided by the lobbiests. I think that they also go out of their way to make the language of bills so complicated that nobody can understand just what they are trying to say.Let's make them speak in plain english so everyone understands what they are talking about.
I'm not against bringing back some tar and feathering and maybe riding them out of town on a rail.How about some stocks and any other medievil entertainments we can think of.

reply to post by billxam


Hear, hear!! You've managed to put into concise eloquent words what I have been feeling for a long while now. I have infact tried on several occasions to pen a thread very much like this one that just ended up in a rant that wandered down every road imaginable.

You mentioned perhaps you were too well educated. In my estimation there is no such thing. It will be our generation (yes, I'm right there with you in age and medication level... ) along with generations past who still care and a few from the generations after ours, that will pull us out of this mess in one way or another. What I think we need to do is to 'educate', teach by example, the majority of people in the generations that came after ours about their real consitutional rights seeing how our present school system has seen fit to take messy and inconvenient little subjects like Civics out of the cirriculum. The knowledge to power their ideals into actions have essentially been striped away from them and has been replaced by a void that is unfortunately being filled by misplaced rage that comes from hopelessness and helplessness. This misplaced rage is what scares me and I fear will lead to violence in our own streets, when perhaps that violence is not needed.

In short education, I believe, is the main key to getting us out of this quagmire. Education does not end with the receiving of a diploma but is like a 'fluid situation'... constantly changing and expanding. But it takes the instestinal fortitude to continue to education oneself and even more so to carry that over into teaching others how to arm themselves with the knowhow to educate themselves as well.