printAmericans Say They Hate Government Yet Expect More From Government Than Anyone Else.
For once, a mainstream columnist goes beyond the partisan staked-out positions to look at Americans as they truly are. As an outsider myself, I agree with “American Hypocrites” by Anne Applebaum:
“If you don’t live here all the time, and I don’t, here is what you notice when you come home: Americans—with their lawsuit culture, their safety obsession, and above all their addiction to government spending programs—demand more from their government than just about anybody else in the world. They don’t just want the government to keep the peace and create a level playing field. They want the government to ensure that every accident and every piece of bad luck is either prevented or fully compensated. And if the price of their house drops, they will hold the government responsible for that, too.
To put it bluntly, middle-class Americans of the right, left, and center have now come to expect a level of personal financial security that—despite the stereotypes—most people would never demand from their governments. In a review he wrote earlier this month, Brink Lindsey, the vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute—a man who knows what he is up against—pulled up some extraordinary statistics. Most Americans, it turns out, are suspicious of the free market. And most American also approve of high government spending. The majority of Americans are wary of global trade, don’t trust free markets, and also think ‘the benefits from … Social Security or Medicare are worth the costs of those programs.’ And when the sample is restricted to people who support the Tea Party movement? The number is still 62 percent.
…in Washington, these expenditures are known as ‘third rails’: If you touch them, you’re dead. President George W. Bush talked a little bit about making individuals more responsible for their retirement, and then he gave up. The ‘privatization’ of Social Security, as it was sneeringly described, was just too unpopular, particularly among his own supporters.
I truly hate what this country has become. The majority of the American people are pathetic sheep. I’m not feeling too positive about the future right now.
A bit of inspiration might be worthwhile. Forty-one years ago today, July 20, 1969, Americans took their first steps on the Moon. That effort called out the best in many of us, and prompted many to think of things greater than ourselves. Call me an incurable romantic, but I love this YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g25G1M4EXrQ&feature=related
Damn straight Applebaum is right. Americans live in a Gilded Cage – McMansions with plasma TV’s on borrowed money. The country is paranoid of Taco Bell clerks and has a secret intelligence budget of close to $100,000,000,000 (a new WaPo expose that has upset the big boys in town) spread among power moguls who mainly spend their energy fighting other power moguls. We pay a TSA operating expensive X-ray machines to freak out the population. We bomb Pushtun primitives in Afghanistan. We bail out corrupt, inept banks that gamble on hedged derivatives of inflationary voodoo collateralized debt swaps. We expect the Mayo Clinic type care for every nosebleed. And KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY MEDICARE! And everyone is entitled to suck at the giant udder – free college for quasi-literates, agribusiness loans, no one left behind, and no one fails, we all succeed. Satisfaction guaranteed!
When we have a $ 2,000,000,000,000 deficit and $100 Trillion of obligations, the oligarchs at Goldman-Sachs offer us two alternatives: (1) Spend More Democrats vs. (2) Cut Taxes Republicans. The other day, Chris Matthews asked the Republicans what they would cut (from the budget) and the big boys would not answer. No surprise.
As much as I don’t want people hurt, I think there’s no stopping the coming collapse – no, nothing apocryphal – but all of this is completely unsustainable and flies in the face of the reality humans have had to face since creation began. Closer to home, we’re all wondering about our retirement pensions. Wait a minute! Who gave you or me the right to be paid for not working, at others’ expense?
“But I paid into Social Security and should get back what I put in.”
Yeah, but we-the-people should have known better than to believe a charlatan like Roosevelt et al.; and besides, it isn’t going to matter whether you think you’re entitled or not. The money simply won’t be there!
Then what?
I hope and pray the silver lining in this collapse is that we can begin to rebuild along the lines of the founders’ vision, our families, communities, and our polity, conforming to standards that have some semblance to reality.
I wish I had something really clever to say here, but I don’t. This country is headed for a no man’s land economically, militarily and especially spiritually. It aint gonna be pretty when it finally hits. I don’t think it will be gradual. It will be sudden. The events of the past two years might just be the start.
Expanding, empowering, and making permanent the suckteat class has been the success of the last century. I’d like to believe some evil Princeton genius saw what Pavlov was doing with his salivating dogs and turned the process onto the proles but it’s more likely all too human nature is at fault. Ah well, live and learn – I hope.
Before Anne Applebaum, there was Benjamin Franklin:
“Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other”
http://www.usconstitution.net/franklin.html
I’ve heard of Broad brushes, but this takes the cake. EVERYONE believes the way Applebaum and Mercer believe? Come on now.
And then there are the pathetic sheep, those that follow the Reps and Dems, and those that follow Libertarian / Liberal / Conservative blogalators. Yes, you who have already fallen in line with this article and its expressed comments, are as much sheeple as anyone you try to paint with your pathetic diatribes.
Individualism is to be favored for a true self-actualized person. Try not following your favorite blogists and think critically without sycophantically bouncing back the same thoughts and feelings from your host.
If you truly believe everything in a lockstep manner, then just don’t comment, because who wants to read another mini-article, just like the other article? Certainly not Individualists.
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In 1959, a young man from Detroit actually hit the nail on the head. I only wish I had heeded his message. Please visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oNrreaCeDY
I cannot go back and neither can anyone else, but all of us have opportunities to go forward. If you have a good mind, a good body, a determination to learn and to apply your knowledge, START NOW. Ilana wrote a book…emulate her drive to succeed in your area of interest. PS: Thank you, Barrett Strong, from a former Detroiter.
I hope y’all aren’t too bored by my repitition of the following, but:
The fundamental problem of democracy is that, when any idiot can vote, most voters will indeed be idiots. There is no democratic solution to the fundamental problem of democracy. Those who hope that a collapse of our so-called civilization will solve the fundamental problem of democracy are probably too optimistic.
I’m always amused over statistics that purport that some majority thinks so and so. I’ve lived in the US all my life, and have never been asked what I think about anything. I believe most statistics can be made to show whatever the researcher is looking for. Who does this Cato Institute study represent? Certainly not me or anyone I know.
Hey Dave…CATO is of interest to me…I am a supporter via my donations. BTW…I worked at a Market Research company and we would conduct research for private companies and organizations for nearly everything imaginable. Please consider being a phone researcher for an M/R and you will have your eyes opened. Or if you’re an entrepreneur, do your own market research surveys…fun! ps: Barbara Grant, Thank You for the link…it made me smile in fond remembrance of more innocent, less cynical days.
Gringo is right. As far as I am concerned, if you aint a tax payer you shouldn’t vote. That may not weed out all the idiots but it will darn well weed out those so willing to spend on questionable projects.
I read the comments by “anonymous”. He didn’t seem to have a real point to make. No wonder he won’t sign it.
The coming American ‘crash’ that so many people here forecast may come indirectly. How about a collapse of Mexico’s political and economic system, sending a REAL tidal wave of illegals across the border ? That would be enough to push America over the brink, and seems to me a not-too-outlandish scenario. Mexico is as good a candidate for failed-state status as anybody.