Primal Scream

In what passes for leadership, our President once again took to the airwaves tonight with hollow calls for class warfare and desparate calls, for more calls, to congress: presumably to pressure our repesentives to "compromise."  Arguably, compromise is in order; that said, blaming the tea-party, for calling the abject and prolonged failures of our so-called leaders to account, is IMHO misplaced.  If there were more factions with the perceverence to play by the rules and effectively petition their government for rational change, ours would be a better country with a brighter future.

What bothers me most about the current morass is how little attention is being focused on the true underlying issue: ironically, the "balanced (read more taxes acompanying vague promises to cut spending) approach", is really nothing more than a proxy on Democrats' and the mainstream media's limp-wristed embrace of true change.  Specifically,  the left simply cannot fathom retreat from a century-long slide toward socialism: said differently, they just can't bring themselves to believe that a better governement may, in fact, be a smaller one. The 2012 elections, therefore, are likely to be the pail of water that follows an unsuccesful wake-up call.

And that brings me to the point of this post: Republicans seem too stupid to realize that they've got the sure win theme right under their nose!

Preemptively self-editing paragraphs of illustration, I'll just state an obvious aspect of human nature: even though our culture has evolved (or devolved) any number of unscuritably-complex trappings (e.g., government) , under it all we're still dumb animals.  We're still most driven by instincts burnt-in over milenia of natural selection (apologies to the ID idiots out there): we're still captives of Maslow's Hierarchy; and, Richard Dawkins persuasivley argues that our most basic appitites are still shaped by our selfish genes! In short, as a whole and as individuals, we're still more interested in the propogation of our genes than even our own survival.  What parent would't give her own life to save her child?  Indeed, most adults would, in a pinch, unhesitantly risk their life for any child!

So, here's the killer issue: just below our collective conscious is a quite natural revulsion to what we're doing to children and childrens' children. What previous generation has little more than massive debt as its legacy? What will they say about us: they who will, perforce, one day have much less just so that we can have much more than what we actually earn? How can anyone (apart from our President and many in congress) celebrate tonight's "compromise": i.e., an act of faux-statesmanship that leaves them feeling good about adding only $7trillion (as opposed to $10T) to the travesty that is ours?!!!

All that the Republicans need for a landslide next year is to, somehow, distant themselves from what happened tonight (if not claim some credit for what the tea baggers hath wrought).  All things considered, tonight's debt compromise was, probably, the best we could do.  `just sayin...

Comments

[Ron Bachman]

The recent deficit and debt debate has solidified one clear notion in my mind. We are not dealing with normal thinking. We must all recognize our politicians for what they really are - addicts and alcoholics. They can not and will not see that the drunken binge of spending is destroying our country and our children's future. Proof - why are they so afraid of passing a balanced budget amendment out of Congress when it would require 75% (38 states) to approve of it before it becomes law? If the BBA is so bad then surely states will reject the idea. But noooo, Congressmen and Senators do not want anyone or anything stopping them from going on their next drunken spree. They are addicts with China their pusher. Final comment. Addicts never tell the truth when covering up their habits. All we heard in the recent debate was how we are going to "cut expenditures" by $3 trillion. The truth is that instead of increasing our debt from $14T to $24T in the next 10 years, we will only increase it to $21T. Oh, and BTW the $21T assumes an economic growth rate of 4+% per year. How likely is that to be a truthful economic projection? Come on...the public has now wised up. Charlie Brown will no longer try to kick the football, instead he and the Tea party will lead the charge to kick the lieing bast**ds out of office. You know those that claim a false $2.4T reduction will solve the problem when we also know that only $7B (0.02% of the 2011 budget) is scheduled for the next 12 months. Give me a break...give me a Margaret Thatcher! a Ronald Reagan! a Calvin Cooledge! almost anyone but these SOBs.

[Doug]

Yo BO!
Thanks for the comment. Hard to argue with your logic