Update: Welcome, Charming peeps and Nice Doggies! Wipe your feet, dammit! And see the post before this one, for background.
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My dearest detractor, one 'mouse, writes me in the comments and I excerpt here:
At the end of the day, I know you and I agree about wanting a country which is internationally respected, whose currency doesn't suck, which has great education and good opportunity for anyone willing to work their ass off, pay their taxes and follow the rules, where the forces of greed are tempered by enough oversight that half of Florida doesn't end up in foreclosure and so forth.
What we (you and I) need is to figure out how to get the rest of this nightmare of near-50:50 devisiveness off its ass and doing something about the things that matter locally and globally.
Either that or let's have a margarita and listen to the band while the ship goes down. I'm mixing -- frozen or rocks?
I love the dear 'mouse, I really do, but I gotta post my reply out here, where we can all take a look and discuss it. Herewith, my scattered reply:I could care less if my country is respected around the world, 'mouse. That's where we just need to have a margarita. Um... Frozen!
I don't care about what others think. Even other countries. You can't live like that on a personal level, and you can't live like that on an international level. It's a paralyzing mindset, as any psychologist will attest. You have to make your best effort based on solid principles and go with it. If you doubt yourself and what you're made of, there are plenty of jackals waiting to devour your remaining sense of Self.
No nation on earth does as much, is more giving, less greedy, less corrupt and full of such goodwill. If other countries can't see that, how are we to blame?
I've been to three other countries besides my own. I've lived in one for an extended period of time. While I loved its people, I could see its core was full of fear, envy, greed and corruption. Not borne of oppression from without, but from lack of a moral compass within.
I will never willingly consent to my taxes subsidizing laziness, corruption, another family's responsibilities, or another's chosen lifestyle, even if that lifestyle foolishly didn't count the cost of its mortgage. But my "public servants" will certainly see to it that I do so anyway.
Saying that, I propose that if we insist on prosecuting drug pushers, we also prosecute loan pushers when they offer easy money to unqualified applicants. Oh wait. The liberals insisted we do so. Shall we vilify those who did their bidding, just because they expected to make their money back? Or see if maybe Rezko can front a bit of mortgage money for the rest of us?
Obama isn't going to make our currency suck any less. The Euro is overvalued and Bush keeps printing money, so yeah, I can agree with you that we need a stable fiscal policy. Yea! Pour another round, darlin'!
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Hey, how come the NEA has no problem with how it's perceived by other people? How come lawyers don't fret about how they are perceived by other people? Why aren't our Congressmen concerned with how little we respect them? Why doesn't the MSM fall over in a dead faint because of how they are viewed?
I know the answer to this one! It's because they are IN and their detractors are OUT. They are proud of their accomplishments and their unity, no matter how many kids can't read, widows' pensions are devoured, imminent domains are confiscated or ficticious stories are produced and lives are ruined. But they won't extend that grace to their own country. It's a dysfunctional mindset on a deeply and seemingly irretrievable level.
Great education comes from healthy competition. Truly awful tenured professors and teachers at public schools can't get fired. More money will not fix that, and Obama is too much of a fucking Chicago politician --bought and paid for-- to buck the NEA or any other inbred group of union slackers.
The best education? Pain.
If life doesn't hurt when we do stupid things, we don't learn. You posted rules and consequences for your daughter, based on that marvelous and healthy compassion for her well-being. It's not punishment when people do stupid things and suffer for it. It's called "learning one's lessons." It's nice if kids will listen and avoid "lessons", but prepare your heart to be broken, 'mouse. You just can't control her life every minute, or spare her from her choices. Not without creating a lesser being... in your eyes and her own.
My compassion is my own to mete out or withhold. It is not the job of my government to be God, to be All, to be Mother or Father. It just needs to be cohesive enough to call together an army for defense, judges for interpretation, and a representative body that listens to its constituency.
The divide resides in a deep, deep philosophical and moral void, that didn't use to exist between Left and Right, back when it was a matter a style and not substance.
Today's adults have grown up in a world that expects the government to be more than any government should ever aspire to: a supplemental oversight of the individual and their daily choices of normalcy.
We no longer agree on the substance, so the style isn't even arguable any more.
And greed? The truly greedy are the ones who are first envious of someone with more. That is the one really ugly thing about the liberal Left: Class warfare. I'm the last of eight kids, and my mom understood human nature amongst contending peoples. "What do you care what your brother has in his stomach? Do you have enough? Yes, so shut up!" And she was a lifelong Democrat! But that was back when it was about style, not substance. An honorable difference.
Now, those who do not work for the government outright, are bound to support those who do. When government grows beyond its rightful place, the silent, plodding cows of capitalism bear the burden.
I'm tired of it. Tired way down deep. It's the new slave class, the new Company Store that makes me pay for the fantasies and guilt trips of the privileged few who score a sweet government job.
And will continue to vote largesse unto themselves as long as they can get away with it. And nobody on the Left will ever use the word, "greedy" for such. I read today where Wellstone didn't provide Workers' Comp for his campaign staff that died with him in the plane crash, so the taxpayer, the little guy, gets to ante up one more time. He was another one, another Hope and Change hypocrite.
Fuck 'em all. Fuck FDR and LBJ and O-ba-ma.
CHANGE? Hardly. Just new shiny faces to shine the light into to keep 'em from noticing the grimy truth of it all. What's new about more government programs that I get to pay for? Fuck Obama. And fuck Michelle O., Hillary, John McCain and George W. Bush for playing along with it. Everyone of them is pandering to the class warfare, the free ride, the easy ticket, the expanded and distant responsible Parent Government Educator Moralizer GOD. At my expense.
The cardinal rule of the jungle is:
don't mess with a man's woman, or with his money. If this all sounds personal, it's because the Government is intensely personal when it dips into my wallet. It touches the very heart of my survival and then it chides me for wanting some accountability for my sacrificial contribution.
I'd rather have Bill Clinton back. At least he left the economy alone. The only smart thing he ever did.
Yeah, I
HOPE to keep most of the money I've worked for. I'd rather have compassion on my neighbor that I know, that I can call to account, rather than toss it to a committee of far-flung do-gooders who wring their hands at the thought of inconvenience and hardship and call it, "suffering.'
Precious few folks alive in the U.S. are "suffering" from anything we as a country have done. For true suffering, just have your little business get audited by the IRS or sued.
Yes, another 'rita, please! On the rocks -- where we're headed.
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