I have had house guests. When I have guests I find it
difficult to blog. It’s just as well as there isn’t much to blog about these
days. The same old stuff seems to linger on day to day to the last syllable of
recorded insanity: gun control, immigration, Iran, deficits, the budget,
abortion, voting rights, and an out-of-control basketball coach. All
interesting topics I guess, but wake me when anything actually happens.
It all reminds me of a story I once heard, I don’t remember
when or from whom, and I’m sure it’s not a true story, but it goes like this: A
rancher takes his young son out and stands him on a fence post. He instructs
him to jump and tells him he will catch him. The trusting little boy jumps, the
father makes no attempt to catch him. As the boy rolls in pain in the dust the
father says, “Let that be a lesson to you, don’t trust nobody, not even your
own father.”
I didn’t like this story when I first heard it, and I don’t
like it now. But I’m beginning to believe there is something to it. I think
Social Security is a perfect example of how you cannot trust anybody. First, we
are reassured by some that Social Security is “off the table” because it does
not contribute to the deficit. Now we learn that President Obama is offering to
cut some Social Security benefits in order to arrive at the “grand bargain.” If
Social Security does not contribute to the deficit, and if it is off the table,
why should it be involved in such negotiations at all? Someone is lying here.
Not only that, some keep insisting that Social Security is going to be bankrupt
because there are no actual funds in the system while others insist it is fully
funded and safe but will eventually need some fine tuning. This argument seems
to hinge on the fact that Congress has borrowed money from the fund and spent
it so it has no real assets. It is, however, as I understand it, still solvent
because it has Government notes that are based on “the full faith and trust of
the U.S. government.” Thus those who are telling us the notes are worthless are
basically telling us the full faith and trust of the U.S. government is
worthless. This is rather strange as these are the same notes we sell everyday
to other governments who seem to believe in the full faith and trust of our
government. So, who do you trust, nobody? It would seem to me in my apparent
naivete that either Social Security is off the table and solvent or it is not.
This unfortunately reminds me of my beloved father who was shrewd enough about
most things but thought that Joe McCarthy must be right about his accusations
because he would not be allowed to say them if they were not true. Sigh.
What has happened in our culture that we have come to
distrust our government so readily? While I’m sure there have always been those
who sometimes distrusted government this seems to have become a veritable
epidemic of distrust. Personally, I think it probably began with Ronald Reagan
who fed us the nonsense that “government was the problem.” If government was
the problem that implied, it seems to me, that government was somehow
dishonest. I don’t think the situation improved much what with Iran/Contra and
with the first President Bush’s statement about “read my lips.” President
Clinton certainly didn’t improve things with his various lies, especially about
Monica. But no one could have done more to destroy the faith in government
credibility than Bush/Cheney who never told the truth about anything,
especially their illegal, unconstitutional, and criminal “war” with Iraq.
I can’t say President
Obama is doing much to improve our trust in government, especially as he is
apparently about to throw our so-called “entitlements” out the window in spite of his claims he would
not do so. Social Security should not be a negotiating point, period, whether
it is part of a “grand bargain” or not. I believe it is true Social Security
has not contributed to the deficit, is separately and independently funded, is
and will be solvent with some adjustments, and should indeed be “off the table.”
Medicare is a different matter. But it, too, could be saved
and improved by gradually extending it to everyone, the most sensible thing to
do to solve our horrendous problem of the most expensive least efficient
healthcare in the modern world. But, of course, when you mention this
relatively sensible solution for health care these days, many cry “socialism”
and reach for their assault rifles, two dismal idiotic belief systems that seem
to go hand in hand.
Culture with a capital “C,” that life style of refinement,
taste, and true “civilization” has all but vanished in the United States.
Culture with a small “c,” that is, as a functional system for providing basically instinctless creatures with the means for
survival, food, shelter, water, etc., seems to have also been disappearing,
except perhaps for the one percent. I think I understand what is going on and I
can truthfully say, “I don’t trust nobody.”
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