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4/29/11

We are headlong into a Double Dip

The Great Recession is far from over...

What is important is our attitude and determination regarding it.

A lot can be said and written about the various events and problems that the United States and the global economy have. I will leave that for a video blog I'm working on.

What I will write is that the vast majority of our government and elected leaders has done us great disservice and has not been acting in the best interests of the American people. We, the people, have allowed this to go on too long and it is up to us to change it. We need to figure a way to get rid of the entrenched political and bureaucratic class along with their friends in the financial world without too much clash amongst ourselves. It is inevitable that there will be discord among us as conditions deteriorate and we disagree about solutions. That is part and parcel of a Democratic Republic such as ours. We will loudly and acrimoniously disagree but we need to avoid violence, we have had one Civil War in this country and the current conditions do not require another. Rather, it requires a revolution of a different sort, one that can be carried out in the vein that the Founding Fathers clearly laid out for us.

One thing is certain in my mind. I have studied enough US history to know we have been here before in our long history, at times in worse conditions, also that in the past people have thought we would never return back to a much better place. I also know that the American people themselves will dig us out of this and not our government or any other forces but by our sheer will and skills. It is The American Way and that is still alive and well among us, even if it seems dormant for the moment. We will endure, survive and overcome but there is no short term fix for this. It is a journey that requires a minimum of 5-10 years of hard work and we can do it, even as spoiled as we've become after 30 years of prosperous times.

Now, more than ever, is the time to revive the American Spirit, remain positive and realistically optimistic and determined to overcome and defeat the obstacles before us. This country has done it before and can do it again. There will be times we will feel down, disheartened and discouraged and it is important during those times we continue putting one foot in front of the other and keep going. It is interesting to me that two opposing forces, unionists and the far left along with tea party sympathizers and the far right, are the ones stirring up debate and flexing their muscles. They are the ones that will eventually move all of us to remove the roadblocks causing the idiocy emanating primarily from the northeastern corridor stretching from Boston to Washington, DC. The government will once again be directed by the citizens of the country and not the other way around.

2 comments:

  1. I agree that the American Way is still a great ideal to aspire to and I know people who aspire to it. I aspire to it myself.

    Maybe it's because I wasn't there (or at least cognizant of being there) during earlier hardships in this country but I can't help but think that divisiveness and apathy are two huge problems right now. And apathy might be the wrong choice of word...but something seems to make a lot of people watch what's going on and not seem to care. My hope is that they only SEEM not to.

    I'm having a tough time remaining optimistic right now...but that doesn't mean there isn't good reason to be. I'm as liable as anyone else to hear enough silliness that I start to wonder if I should believe it. Global warming (excuse me: climate change), TV reality crap, Donald trump, etc., etc., it all feels like an awful lot to fight against sometimes.

    But...if I could spend an hour with William Clark and/or Meriwether Lewis, I'd be embarrassed to even dream of questioning our abilities.

    Like your more-recent photo of Phoenix (I haven't commented yet but it's a very cool picture) it's definitely a matter of perspective.

    Thanks for posting, JR. This is very good; it's the "pep talk" my patriotic side needed.

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  2. I've sensed your difficulty in remaining optimistic right now and I understand why. I have trouble at times myself. Some days it really is just putting one foot in front of the other and keep going.

    I wonder also about the divisiveness and apathy, I do think it is apathy or more like being numb for lack of knowing any other way to feel. I think out economy is not going either forward or backwards but standing still, which is the cause of most people's fear.

    The best thing I ever did was stop watching tv (as in we don't even have one except for DVDs) and tuning out a lot of the pop culture media which is called news. I mean Trump...really? Give me a break, I hear a little of the stuff and just have to turn away because it's too disheartening to see the cotton candy being handed out as so-called news or current events.

    Perhaps that's were a lot of the apathy comes from. A lot of people have turned it off also and no longer care. The burden is on them however to find another way to better occupy their time rather than be apathetic and do nothing.

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