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"The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy for those who think" Horace Walpole
In the wake of the Massachusetts election, I found it extremely humorous to see all the so-called experts change their analysis overnight. They were trying to sound like they knew what was going to happen all along. Once again, like the politicians themselves, all the experts were wrong and most of them still are. I hope you will entertain my humble opinion as I try to explain what forces caused this to happen.
After World War II, the US emerged as the only industrialized country not decimated by war. We were in the position as the only superpower in the world with the greatest military force in the history of the world. The world looked to us to help them rebuild and we built the things that did it. As a result we became the wealthiest country in the world. The only threat was the socialist nations of China and the Soviet Union. As we found out later, they were not as powerful as advertised and were never a bigger threat than we could handle. President Eisenhower warned us in his farewell address against not only the "Military Industrial Complex" but in the same speech he gave the following, lesser known, warning:
"Americans must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow" - Dwight D. Eisenhower
However, the generation that won the war and the generations that followed did not heed either warning.
The "Baby Boomers" grew up in times of unlimited possibilities and credit. They gradually grew into power with the ability of borrowing tomorrow's money to cure all social ills and disparities. Soon our financial elite began to sell our nations true wealth, our industrial and manufacturing base, to the highest foreign bidder. We saw them all come and go: the Europeans, the middle east oil barons, the Japanese, and now the Chinese. When we had no more industries to sell, we began to sell our children into debt.
Our businessmen's greed was only matched by our politicians desire to create larger and more grandiose government sponsored programs. These programs were used to buy the votes of the people with promises of curing everything.The programs never seemed to be able fixed what they were created to fix. The unintended consequences of the programs created more problems that required the politicians to fix with more costly programs. We declared wars on poverty, crime, drugs, hunger, ignorance, terror, etc. We never won any of these wars and only seemed to end up with more wars.
At the same time, we have been in wars around the world throughout the 20th century. We started the century in the Philippines and continued in World War I, World War II (still in Germany and Japan), Korea(still there), Vietnam, Central America, Middle East, Gulf War I, Gulf War II (still in Afghanistan and Iraq), as well as the Cold War and hundreds of small police actions in around the world both known and unknown.
Another concern is that the extraordinary power given to our legions of alphabet law enforcement agencies could be misused to restrict our liberties. If we have to give up our liberties to protect our liberties, then we have no net gain. We the people should never grant powers to the government that you would not want in the hands of your worst enemies. Someday your political and ideological enemies will have the control of those agencies. At the same time, you will also give them the temptation to misuse it.
We need to get the message that we can't trust people who pander to us with the illusion that they are who they say they are. How can a political party claim to be on the moral high ground and lie, cheat and steal from us, our children and our children's children? How can a political party claim to care for the working class and assist Wall Street in selling off our industrial base? How can anyone claim to be looking out for the people, while bailing out the bankers who practice predatory lending? These same bankers use deception tactics and hidden fees to drive up the bill on credit card holders who are already drowning in debt. We say that they are too big to fail, while we individual citizens are allowed to fail because of what they did.
So while the Republicans are trying to hijack the Tea Party Movement (sorry, already did that) and the Democrats are using programs for the poor and the sick to pay off their political debts, what is our net gain? Have years of wars both declared and undeclared ended hatred and violence? Have 80 years of social engineering made us wealthier, healthier, and put an end to poverty? Have years of gradually taking away more of our liberties given us more freedom and truly increased our security? As the economy continues to fail, will we be able to afford to maintain vast overseas military spending, meet our domestic social obligations, rebuild our failing infrastructure and repair our economy.
The people are almost tapped out due to unemployment and taxes. The working class simply does not have the disposable income to spend our economy back into shape. The debt load is at astronomical levels and the rest of the world will not be willing or able to buy our paper for much longer.When we eventually have to face the music, the Politicians will retire, CEO's will move to the islands and the bankers will live in gated communities with a back-up plan to move to Europe and Asia. We the people will be left holding the bag.
Unrestrained immigration of more and more uneducated workers puts downward pressure on wages. New immigrants will work cheaper and under harder conditions. The unintended consequences of this massive influx of unskilled labor are fewer consumers who can support the consumer economy. The lower wages and higher cost of living leave little disposable income to fuel consumerism. Our economy will pay the price from our rampant greed and corruption, leaving a much smaller and poorer middle-class in its wake.
The real issue of our times is corruption and the fact that we allowed it to happen. At what point will we admit that we have inherited a great gift of freedom and liberty and we squandered it? What will we leave the next generation other than hollow words and large number of IOUs? It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.I think the voters in Massachusetts finally saw the light.That is why for the second time in history Massachusetts, arguably the most liberal state in the union, points a new direction for the rest of us. We must make the incumbents pay.
"May you live in interesting times" Ancient Chinese Curse
