I’m getting so tired of hearing how this or that has never happened in our history. How horrible, groundbreaking, breathtaking, unprecedented, blah, blah, blah, an issue is that might be happening on the news. People are all a fluster over the next little event that has somehow become a great outrage. It’s like the entire country has devolved into a guiless cluster of morons. “My God…how can that happen? What is wrong with the world?” As if lies and deceit were something novel. They’re all acting like little girls swinging on the monkey bars, aghast that the boys have been checking up their skirts. Give me a break!
I guess the politicians take some of the blame for ratcheting up the rhetoric on this crap. Still, I blame a lazy, uninformed, and uneducated public for letting them get by with it. It’s their job to get us to buy the bullshit, and our job to call them on it. You can’t be the shill at the carnival, and then get pissed when you get ripped off!
Let’s start with the Republican Primary. I can’t count the number of times I heard newscasters, reporters, or people at the water cooler talk about how many candidates the Republican’s had. “Good God look at the field. It’s like every Republican politician is running.” Well…not exactly. Nor is it unprecedented, nor was the field all that large. The 2008 election had the Democratic field almost as large, and I heard the same things then. Are people seriously surprised when the time comes to run for President that every power-hungry-party-hack wants to be our fearless leader? If you are…well then my friend…let’s talk about the rise in Florida swamp futures.
The other day I actually heard someone in the booth next to me at Village Inn say “Never before in our history have we had to occupy another country after a war.” Really? How about Korea? Wait…Japan? Hmmm….Germany maybe? Where are these people living? I want to find these rocks. I need extra money, and they’re just the right kind of stupid.
When John Kerry was running for President, I heard over, and over again, by pundits, politicians, press, and everyday people, even by some family members, that “You don’t change Presidents during a war.” You don’t? How about almost every war we’ve had in the 20thcentury? Let’s start with World War II, shall we? We lost Roosevelt, and Truman took office. Then in the Korean War, we elected Eisenhower who replaced Truman. During the entire time we had troops in Vietnam we went through Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and finally Ford. Even Goldman Sachs has had fewer leaders in the same time span, and they managed to destroy an entire economy.
This brings me to another matter, our current financial crisis. Do people really think this is the first time we have ever seen this type of financial meltdown? We’ve had more than one depression, and just about every decade we see a recession. This is nothing new. In 2001, prior to 9/11, the tech bubble burst and evidence showed that companies like Qwest, Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom devised investment strategies which collapsed the markets, causing thousands to lose their homes, jobs, and life savings. Are you really surprised that it happened again in the housing industry? Are you surprised that at the center of BOTH the technology bubble, AND the housing bubble we find Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and hosts of other Investment firms?
Seriously, all the pandering, peddling, pushing, name calling, testifying, and bullying is nothing new. We have seen this throughout time. There is nothing new under the sun. The world is not coming to an end. Communism, fascism, or whatever ism you’ve got stuck in your craw is not coming into being. This is just life. It is nothing new. And until you realize this you are just another pawn in the world of media hell bent on selling you the next new crisis.
In 1941 Franklin Roosevelt made a speech to Congress to support the build up for war with Germany. In that speech he said that the United States was fighting for the universal freedoms that all people possessed. These were the Freedom of speech and expression, the freedom of every person to worship God in his OWN way, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear. I wish he would have added the freedom from stupid.