After writing my post on the war in Afghanistan, I was determined to put my grumblings to rest --- again! But when you have a big mouth that isn’t always easy and, as many of you know, I do have one of those. Well, I can always blame Bob Herbert, Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times, for lighting my fire – again, but I do feel that our country is SICK and he says it all so clearly.
In his column today he says that maybe the economic stress has been too much. And considering the last few months, I tend to agree that it would seem to be suffering from a nervous breakdown.
The political debate has been poisoned by birthers, deathers and wackos who smile proudly while carrying signs comparing the president to the Nazis. People who don’t even know that Medicare is a government program have been trying to instruct us on the best ways to reform health care.
There doesn’t seem to be any end to the craziness. The entire Republican Party has decided that is is in favor of absolutely nothing! Stimulus package, health care reform? No way! Forget about both of them! So far there has been absolutely nothing that the Republican party is in favor of and, incredibly, the party’s poll numbers are going up!
Yes, we obviously need therapy. President Obama addressed the public school students today, urging them to work harder and stay in school. According to Herbert, the folks who bray at the moon are outraged. The President has been likened to Chairman Mao and even Hitler. And a fair number of these nut cases have bought into the imbecilic notion that this is an effort at socialist or Communist indoctrination. And, as could be expected, one father from Texas was quoted as saying that he didn’t want our schools turned over to some socialist movement. Are these people nuts? Do they have any idea what they are talking about?
The wackiness is increasing, not diminishing, and it has a great potential for destruction. There is a real need for people who know better to speak out in a concerted effort to curb the appeal of the apostles of the absurd!
In reality the biggest issue confronting ordinary Americans right now – the biggest by far – is the devastatingly weak employment environment. Politicians talk about it, but any aggressive job-creation efforts are not part of the policy mix. But nearly 15 million Americans are unemployed, according to official statistics. The real numbers are far worse. And the unemployment rate for black Americans is a back-breaking 15.1 percent. Five million people have been unemployed for more than six months, and the consensus is that even when the recession ends, the employment landscape will remain dismal. A full recovery in employment will take years.
Joblessness is becoming the norm and there is a real question as to whether the U.S. economy is capable of providing sufficient employment for all who want and need work.
We’re also having serious trouble facing the hard truths about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the terrible toll they are taking on our young fighting men and women. Most of us don’t want to know. It’s head in the sand time all over again. In addition, we’ve put the costs of these wars on a credit card, without so much as a second thought about what that does to our long-term budget deficits.
The serious wackos, the obsessive-compulsive absurdists, may be beyond therapy. But the rest of us could use some serious adult counseling. We’ve forgotten many of the fundamentals, such as: how to live within our means, the benefits of shared sacrifice, the responsibilities that go with citizenship, the importance of a well-rounded education and tolerance.
But, as Herbert writes, the first step is to recognize that we have a problem.
