It’s a fact of life that nobody who has money wants to lose money, and those who don’t have enough money rarely get enough. Somewhere along the way, we foolishly empowered our politicians to write in whatever they wanted, and of course they did so. Washington is filled with Rolls Royces and Lincolns, while the poor duke it out on crime-ridden streets within blocks of the capitol.
We foolishly wanted to be a free-spending decadent country, and in many aspects we have done so. Where else do people buy $500 cell phones and throw them out six months later for a new $600 model, while the unemployed live in motels on pennies a day they can’t scrape together?
We also like to decide what things in our lives should be cheap, and other countries have enacted fair trade with us to enable us to do that. It’s nearly impossible to find a product that isn’t made in China anymore, yet an article in a recent newscast told of a field of berries that rotted because the owner couldn’t convince anybody to pick them.
Why should we be surprised that the trillion dollar bill collectors are knocking on the door of the White House, and some folks are slipping out the back door trying to hide?
President Obama (a man worthy of more respect than he gets, but also doomed to a future of being known for a misstep or two, like any president) knows that only the rich can afford to pay for anything; the middle class (which gets smaller daily) can scrape by when called upon to pitch in some expenses, and the poor can’t help anybody, not even themselves. But playing political games means that millions of dollars go toward silly self promotional projects (the John Q. Politician Federal Building or Library) that nobody wants to call off because the fellow with whom they shook hands on the deal may not like them anymore. Oh, my heart bleeds for the pain of the popularity contest. That time is over, my friends. It’s absurdism at its most base.
When did we become this way? Hedonistic, apathetic toadies who don’t care about anything but social niceties with countries who wish they could take us over and how much the next luxury item costs rather than who built it?
I don’t care if anybody likes the United States; I just want to be sure it will always be mine. Nobody ever liked us, because we came over here with nothing and built from scratch, and they were jealous of our sense of democracy, our pursuit of liberty and our resourceful nature. I fear becoming a slave to another country because of debts somebody else racked up on my tax dollars. It’s bad enough that average Americans can’t achieve the American Dream, but don’t pervert it into a nightmare, too. We must not borrow from people who would like nothing better than to see us go bust! We must not let our self-sustaining land become fertile ground for other countries’ enterprises. It was bad enough when we allowed our own businesses to ship jobs overseas because it was cheaper to pay a foreign worker than one of our own, but now we’re letting the agricultural industry rot, too.
I would gladly spend some time out in the sun to pick berries; I’d have slathered on SPF 45 and done it for nothing if the fruit could have gone to some starving familes who needed them.
In fact, I think President Obama should send those representatives on Capitol Hill out to a field and let them harvest some crops from the land we claimed with the blessing of God and worked to give our own people a way of life. Maybe the smell of dry-cleaned $500 suits has dulled our politicians’ minds. They’ve forgotten where they are and how they got there.
Come on, guys. America has more decency and honor than you’re showing your countrymen. Give up the big bucks and start trimming (if you can find scissors that are made in America).
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