When I lost my job back in 2007, I knew things were bad. I had hope that they would get better. They didn't, but the problem felt...organic. Like it was just the natural consequence of a series of bad decisions made on a national level. Things that were unintentional consequences of basic greed. Things that could be corrected, as long as some people were willing to turn down their rapacity for the sake of keeping the system going. No point in killing the goose that lays the golden egg, right?
When I lost my job at the end of 2010 it felt more personal. Like it was a consequence of bad decisions made on a more...local level. Someone had screwed up, badly, and lots of other people were going to pay the price.
Even then, even after all those years of watching the national and global economic situation go from bad to worse, even after watching Pyrrhic defeat after Pyrrhic defeat in the political arena, even after saying it myself, I still didn't really believe that people would really and truly intentionally cripple the economy in an effort to hurt their political opponents, and to hell with the consequences, to hell with all the people who would be hurt. Even after Democratic members of Congress came out and stated directly that Republicans were intentionally hurting the economy to hurt President Obama's chances of re-election. Even after employers came out and said they refused to do any more hiring until that half-breed Kenyan-born Muslim socialist fascist was out of the White House.
Until John Boehner got up and said, yes, that's exactly what we're doing.
That was months ago. It hasn't gotten any better since then. The political battle is ramping up. Job seekers are being held hostage. The economy is being held hostage. Republicans want to maximize economic suffering to drive home the point that Americans made a terrible, terrible mistake when they elected Barack Obama in 2008.
Instead I think the point they are making, and underlining in red, and circling and drawing arrows and lightning bolts next to, is what a terrible, terrible mistake it was to load up Congress with even more Republicans in 2010.
Unfortunately, a large proportion of the electorate is soft-minded and easily manipulated. Yes, they say, Barack Obama is a failure, just like Rush Limbaugh said he would be! And besides, those Democrats are evil, what with their love of abortions and gay marriage and the Fourteenth Amendment and all that other un-American crap. I gotta vote Republican!
Will Democrats be able to persuade the electorate otherwise? If they can't, then I honestly think that they deserve to fail. And then our country will be completely back in the hands of the people who brought us to this point in the first place.
The narcissistic primarily autobiographical blog of the pseudonymous d.b. echo
Personally, I think we're wrong to allow to grow into the monstrous octopus thing it's become. We don't need half of the agencies and the staff who run them! This said, we can't fix that particular dilemma without throwing more people out of work. I've been out of work since 2009, and there's yet to be even a glimmer of hope I'll find anything soon. We need "change" and bad!
ReplyDeleteVery few can do what they promise,but actually they don't mean a word of those promises when they make them.
ReplyDeleteObama, as a failure,is not a surprise for someone like me,from outside the US.
But the same game is going on all over the world.Whatever goes wrong anywhere in the world, America and Obama is being blamed.A bad harvest in India,or a Tsunami,it is again because of bad American policies and Obama !