Since the election results were not what many, maybe most, Americans had hoped for, several commentators have talked about the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, etc. I tend to think more in terms of the Death of a Vision; lamenting what might have been. It’s looking like a gray winter indeed.
Many of us were anticipating a Romney administration where extremely competent and knowledgeable people would make the hard choices that would eventually extricate us from the increasingly gray, socialist stupor America has been sliding toward for decades. Instead we will again be saddled with the same economically clueless administration that we have suffered through for four years; an administration that may be purposefully pushing us toward the precipice by the (Allinsky) book.
With Romney and Ryan at the helm, there was a chance that the insane increase in the size and intrusiveness of government might have been stemmed and even reversed. It was a small chance, because the forces of the mainstream press would have joined the Democrats (as always) to bludgeon the Republicans at every turn, insisting that any reduction in profligate government spending represented an attack on puppies, rainbows and little girls’ hair bows.
With Romney/Ryan and Republican majorities in Congress there could have been hope to turn things around and get us on a path to solvency. With nothing changed, on the other hand, we only have gray winter to look forward to, and the dark night of economic collapse hastening on.
President Obama has made it clear that he doesn’t believe in American Exceptionalism. I might agree to this extent: America, which has been the “last great hope of mankind”, can be made to fail, if we continue down the path on which Obama is taking us. We Americans think of ourselves as “charmed”, with “Manifest Destiny” and all that. But what if we are no different from others? What if it was only the genius of our founders in giving us the gift of Freedom that allowed us to because the “city on the hill”, but if our Freedom is taken from us, either by a despot or by the canker of debt, will we be no more creative or courageous than anyone else?
Sorry for the morose tone, but it is increasingly difficult to see a path to turning things around. The president’s obsession with taxing the rich reveals his total lack of understanding of what needs to be done. Even taking 100% of the earnings of people making more than $250,000 in salary would fund the budget for only a few days. But we are faced with ever increasing spending and debt that no one seems to be willing to name, much less to make the hard choices that would solve the problem. 2025 is the year that the Federal Government’s commitments to social programs ALONE will exceed government revenues. But long before that, there will be increasingly less money available for the military, highways, etc., as no one will be willing to tell social program recipients they will have to do with less.
The end can be seen in miniature tableau in Greece, as riots greet the most modest attempts to moderate government spending. Here in the USA, as more and more people depend on the government for food and shelter, Greece is our destiny, unless the American people can realize that when the takers exceed the makers, there will soon be nothing left to take.
