We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.
- Frederick Koenig
The greatest crimes do not arise from a want of feeling for others but from an over-sensibility for ourselves and an over-indulgence to our own desires.
- Edmund Burke
Here’s the problem with that train of thought, though: it’s a load of crap. America is not broke…not by a long shot. It’s just that the “America is broken” narrative fits the ignorance and prejudice of those who believe that we must kill government in order to save it. Yes, we most certainly need to take a good long look at what it is our government does and determine if that is still what we want/need it to do. It’s a matter of evaluating and perhaps reallocating resources…but we’re not broke. Far from it. When you look at where are resources are going- tax breaks for the upper 2% of earners, wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and (at least sort of) Libya…it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to understand that our priorities are sorts of f’d up. How is it that we can spend trillions on wars halfway around the world AND provide tax breaks to the wealthy…and yet we can’t take care of our own here at home? It’s precisely because of the wars and tax breaks we’ve chosen to squander our resources on that we find ourselves in the predicament we’re in.
The money is there, even if the will is not. We have the resources, even if we lack the wherewithal and the moral courage. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I feel pretty comfortable in hazarding a guess that, if we brought our troops home, we’d have a pretty fair chunk of change looking for places to be spent- and there are plenty of places where and ways in which we could put that money to good use within our own borders. Job creation, infrastructure maintenance and upgrades, health care, education…I could go on, but I think you probably get my point. We could do so much more with the blood and treasure that we’re squandering in far-flung wars…and yet we continue throwing scarce resources at those wars without question and with little thought…can’t let the terrorists win, don’tchaknow??
I once heard Barney Frank say that government is just another name for what we choose to do together. Every now and again, it’s a good idea to take a good long look at what it is that we’ve chosen to do together. From where I sit, I’d ask why the US is almost solely responsible for maintaining world peace and security. Why is it that we devote obscene amounts of blood and treasure to global security while Europe tags along for the ride absent a similar commitment? Can we, and shouldn’t we be able to, devote more of what we’re spending on killing and destroying to building and creating things here at home? I believe the answer to the question is a resounding “YES!”- we can and we should. That we’re not I can only ascribe to a tragic lack of vision, thought…and an American Sheeple more prone to emotional reaction than critical thought.
Collectively, we’ve allowed Republicans to set the agenda and the conversation. We’ve allowed them to propagandize us into believing that it’s more important to pay for tax breaks for the wealthy and to continue bleeding ourselves overseas than it is to tend to our own house. We’ve allowed the status quo to continue unabated, when most thinking people would likely admit that our priorities are horribly out of whack. In our democracy, we the Sheeple have the ability to change the course this country is headed on; we’ve simply chosen not to. We’ve chosen to believe the propaganda and fear-mongering…and thus we are where we are.
We’re not broke. We’re not out of money. We’re not bankrupt. What we are is too scared and stupid to demand that those we’ve elected do the right thing and exercise some actual, honest-to-God leadership. We’d rather scream and bitch and moan about those that we’ve elected…when we’d be better served (and certainly more honest) by taking a good, long look in the mirror. We can change things; we’ve simply chosen not to. And we have no one to blame but ourselves. That we refuse to accept that responsibility hardly bodes well for our future.
