It’s Monday. My day to post on my website and try to say something important if not halfway intelligent. I’m hoping for one of two.
Remember Kris Kristofferson’s depressing lamentation “Sunday Morning Coming Down”?
Well I woke up Sunday morning,
With no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad,
So I had one more for dessert.
Then I fumbled through my closet for my clothes,
And found my cleanest dirty shirt.
An’ I shaved my face and combed my hair,
An’ stumbled down the stairs to meet the day.
Although I’m not as lost as the poor bastard he’s singing about, I’m very depressed by what I see happening to this country of ours.
Our Founders were very bright guys who experienced tyranny first hand, something from which they shielded us by building a brilliant constitution for a triune government that in theory eliminates the threat of totalitarianism.
But, in spite of what they did to protect us, they set us up for the traffic jams affecting our network of governance, displayed clearly in the recent battle between the House of Representatives and the White House.
Ingrained in us, we Americans, is a dread terror of losing our freedoms under the law to persons or to one person who will dictate what our lives will be. However, what I saw in the fight between the House and the Obama administration was a definite attempt to install absolute power. Speaker John Boehner bullied by the Tea Party, refused to compromise on any deal proposed by the president. The moth-eaten cliché “my way or the highway” became an ode defining Boehner’s implacability.
Then, the specter of elections 2012 loomed over all our representatives, and President Obama, bullying them into passing a bill to raise the debt ceiling that upon close analysis indicates disaster for our economy and the economies of the world. The bill is a pacifier for us to suck on and believe we are getting nourishment.
Leading U.S. economists, such as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, see the fiasco for what it is: a sham to appease the public and get re-elected. The fact that impoverished Americans and unemployed middle Americans are homeless and hungry apparently means nothing to them. All they seem to want is their jobs back.
Indeed, their conduct is a kind of tyranny in that it subjugates us “little people” to their phony legislation, which they propoganize to us in trying to make us believe they are doing what is best for us, the people.
Democracy is an impossible form of government. We all know that if we have ever served on a board of anything. Once everyone has a right to an opinion, squabbles are immanent. Nonetheless, I think that was the Founders’ intent. If we have a right to defend our opinions and fight to get them accepted, how can a dictator arise.
My fear is that our leaders, using the term very loosely, will battle each other until the world’s economies collapse and we find ourselves in straits similar to those in countries that turned to totalitarianism to find relief, but, of course, finding only slavery.
Yes, I am thoroughly disgusted and disappointed in our federal government, but I think it’s better than the alternative. In a way we must strive to keep them at each others’ throats so that no one will take over. What we, the people, must do is get involved in their verbal fisticuffs and act as referees, i.e. vote. The Founders knew a thing or two about tyranny and they were wise to build in controversy.
So, perhaps my depression is over-reaction to something that is an odious good. Maybe beer for breakfast isn’t all bad. After all, it has one of the basic foods: grain. And the dirty shirt I will wash in 2012, maybe not sparkling clean but something to work with . . . again.