The older I get, the more I hate "politics as usual". At the drop of a hat, and they drop the hat themselves, various political personnel gin up a tempest in a teapot over one thing or another that truly doesn't have one whit to do with the business of running the largest checkbook in the free world.
Fighting over which pork project gets fed versus which essential service gets cut creates a great deal of hostility from the people who benefit from either. Their representatives in the halls of power often participate in back door dealings that make the Cosa Nostra look like the neighbors down the street.
The manufactured outrage over what should be done versus who should pay for it is making me queasy.
Everyone blames everyone else.
Did you know that republicans, democrats, communists, Zionists, Muslims, Mormons and independents ALL receive welfare, SSI, SSI disability? There are Baptists who are receiving the largess of pork barrel spending and young moderates who are benefiting from the college grant program. Yet ever person from all stratas of life wants to hold out their hand to receive their 'fair share' into their grubby little paw while denying the same 'fair share' to another.
Our nation has been about 'fair shared' to death.
In my world, this is how it goes:
Hubby brings home the bacon, namely a paycheck from a job well done, and deposits said bacon into the bank to use to pay our bills. From this deposit, the bacon is distributed to the various people who hold the "powah" over our lives.
Truck payment, house payment, insurance, utilities, phone service and internet, credit card bill, groceries and sundry things like gasoline and medical payments pretty well eat up each paycheck.
So, when the bills are paid and there is a chance that there might be a few bucks left, the priority list of where those few bucks goes is well established. I try VERY hard to avoid overdrawing the Merrill Family Accounts. It just isn't kosher.
Contrast that to our nation.
The same folks that are filling the airwaves with their political outrage are the same folks that run the nation's checkbook into the ground. They whip out their pens and sign the taxpayers names to all sorts of boondoggles, both within and without our national borders.
We don't get to decide.
Our "representatives" do that job for us. Except once they enter the D.C. Beltway, they can't hear us anymore. The Siren Song of Policial Committee Membership sings to them in the dulcet tones of their invisible but palpable power. So intoxicating the lure, they forget the people who elected them and seek to serve only those who can push, pull and lift them to higher office. We, the people no longer matter.
We send billions of American tax dollars to foreign countries. They hate us.
We send billions of American weapons to foreign countries to "liberate" others. Those others hate us.
We send billions in food and aid to help the suffering. The suffering never see it. It's held up by their evil national leadership and used as a bargaining chip against their own people.
But our representatives blithely keep signing checks for the aid as if we can keep dipping into the empty, cracked and broken national cookie jar to pay the bills.
Do any of them learn math at the high priced hoity toity schools they attended? Doesn't seem like it. At least, it isn't the same math I learned.
Deficit mathematics dogs ALL political parties like the Hounds of Baskerville. They all believe that they are somehow anointed to be in office and that they have the personal right to spend, spend, spend. Yet if the "other" party does so, that party is akin to Satan's offspring.
Folks, I have a message for you: Y'all are all Satan's offspring the way you lie to us, manipulate the wording, massage the data and in all ways corrupt the numbers to present your perverted message at the expense of real truth. And kiddies, this isn't some exestential theory. No need to go all philosophical about "what is real truth".
IF YOU DON'T HAVE THE MONEY TO BUY THE PRODUCT DON'T BUY IT! Taking out loans from other nations just destabilizes our own!
That goes for nations just like it does us 'regular' people in the "flyover" part of America.
The problem really comes down to this. For all of the manufactured outrage in the Beltway, there is some all-fired REAL outrage in the hearts of people being screwed out of their pension, their job and their lives by the people in positions of power who no longer care enough to represent them.
It's become the grossest example of "I've got mine" that there is.
We are ALL Americans.
All of us.
Not just the politically powerful, but that little old lady in Detroit trying to dodge gang bangers to spend way too much at the store for milk, bread and eggs. It's the man in California trying to keep his 5 kids in clothes, college and cucumbers until his money runs out. And it's the gal in Iowa balancing her farm's accounts against ever mounting fuel and seed costs is an American too. That farm has been in her family for generations, but does her representative care? Nope. It's all about keeping entrenched power and position.
I don't have to manufacture outrage. It's the real deal.
Those on Capital Hill need to stop shelling out money to strangers, people who hate us, and enemies ready to nuke us into oblivion. They need to stop printing money that has only faith backing it because there isn't enough gold, silver and jewelry to back the currency's worth.
They need to start listening to us taxpayers who are sweating bullets trying to keep our homes while they enjoy their two or three on our dime.
They need to stop flying all over creation for fact-finding missions and get into a beat up 17-year old van to do their business and pray that it actually starts.
And most of all, they need to understand that "we, the people" don't really hate the government, we hate what people have become when they join the ranks of the government of our nation. They become puppets to whomever is in power at the time. They fight and squabble like babies over a toy. They act as if someone will always clean up their mess and deal with the stench of their actions because "we, the people" always have.
But I wonder just how much outrage we could manufacture if "we, the people" told them flat out: "NO MORE!" and stopped en masse paying our obesience to them as if they were demigods?
What if we all showed up at our representatives office and demanded to know why he or she wasn't really there handling the business for which they were elected?
Most of the time, the pictures on CSPAN show half empty chambers. Where in the hell are they? Because doing what we pay them for should mean their butts are in the chair we elected them to sit in and vouch for OUR needs.
I don't think any level of D.C. outrage can match the anger of the man and woman in "flyover country" who have lost their home due to the lies and machinations of the politically connected. I don't believe they can gin up the raw fear of the soldier who wonders if he or she is going to be paid while they are in harm's way and their family is going hungry while they serve. There is no way those guaranteed their paycheck can understand what it is like to hope you can scrape up enough money to just feed the kids when you have nothing left in your wallet.
It's time for some meaningful changes - it is past time for them. But the most important change we can make is to prevent ANY politician in D.C. from serving more than two terms in office. Then NO ONE gets to be so powerful that they can afford to forget the people who sent them there in the first place.
Then, we need to ensure that from the President on down that NONE of them get a paycheck AT ALL when they refuse to do the business of the nation and get us out of debt and manage our national affairs like adults instead of preening adolescents trying to score points.
Outrage? You bet! I got a bellyful right here!
