As some of you have come to know, I'm a huge movie fan. One of my favorite movies is Seems Like Old Times (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081480) starring Chevy Chase and Goldie Hawn. This romantic comedy has tons of great lines, fantastic character actors, and a nice steady pace of slapstick. Reminds me a bit of government, replete with the great story lines, characters that don't go away, and the same old, fall-down-the stairs slapstick form of wielding power.
I have to admit that I was a bit hopeful that the Obama administration would make substantive change to how our government takes care of business, specifically fiscal business. Something about "change we can believe in" was thrown around quite often. I'm sure I possessed the same hope for previous administrations. So, my indictment here is not of a specific president or administration. My fight is with the fundamental tenets of our constitution. We must make some changes to our constitution to make a better future for our government, the woeful entity that it is, and for our future generations of bloated, spoiled kids and grand kids (Alas, I'm a bit bloated and spoiled, but I'm working on changing that!).
Term limits. I've said enough already, I know. If there is one thing I despise it's some fat, old, bloated senator who's been living off the tit for some 50+ years. It's not a class warfare statement. They just don't know better.
It is time we instituted term limits in this country across the board. Along with proportional taxation, reduced government scope, and localized living, we must, as a people, herald in a generation of citizen legislators. Time and money...sorry, a shit pot of time and money...should not be spent campaigning for the next round of Mother's Milk. Get on with the business of the people, debate the facts and the issues, relegate the influence peddlers to the brothels and prisons they so richly deserve, and engender great thinking in this country once again.
Why is it so difficult? Why are we, as a people, so careless here? We're lazy. It's too easy to just hit the same button in the booth. Also, we've gotten used to the nice things our fat cats catch for us - roads, bridges, jobs - that swim about in the murky waters of Washington that we cannot get for ourselves. Woe is us. B/S! I'm over the old times. Bring in the new times.
Ah well, I'm back, folks. As always, be thankful for what you have, buy only what you need, and work diligently for peace. I shall try to do the same. From the Nasti, Sic Semper Tyrannis (thanks, little brother, for another great round of ivory-tower conversation)!
6 years ago
1 comment:
You make many good points in this piece (as usual). Seems you (and sooooo many others in this country) have fallen into the same impatient trap with this administration: expecting incredible amounts of change in an even more incredibly short time frame. I mean, they've only been at the helm for 86 friggin' days. Good God, man, what were you expecting? Something biblical? Moses II, perhaps? Anyone who expected such radical change within the 1st 90 days was/is naive. ESPECIALLY, given the unwieldy beast that our form of gov't has become. For an unofficial list of some (I don't believe for a moment that this is an exhaustive list) of the administration's accomplishments to date, see: http://www.obama-mamas.com/obama-accomplishments.htm
But, I do think the important thing to take away from this portion of the discussion is the pervasiveness of the "instant gratification" culture that's emerged in this country. Many of us have lamented that this may indeed be one of the root causes for the mess we find ourselves in today, this feeling that we're all entitled to the best/biggest/fastest/most-up-to-date "whatever" that we can get our greedy, impatient little hands on. And, yes, those of us who complain that the Obama administration hasn't moved fast enough on "____" (fill it in) are falling into the same trap. We need to wake up, face reality, and suck it up. This is going to be a loooong haul, friends. It took a very long time to screw this thing we call a republic up, it's probably going to take an even longer time to fix it.
Term limits: duh! Not sure whether it's more lamentable that we're bordering on needing to adopt legislation to remedy this, or that we've allowed things do devolve to this point. You & I have both pointed out the sadness of having to come up with laws to remind ourselves that certain fairly common sensical things are wrong (I believe the last thing we were discussing was illegal drugs). But, for me it's more sad that the positions our elected representatives hold were never meant to be permanent occupations. Much less a cash-cow for the office holders. The founders of this nation all had full-time jobs before and WHILE they were governing a new country. How did we get here? How did we ALLOW ourselves to get here? Because, we're also by-and-large apathetic. This coupled with the aforementioned "give-me-what-I-want-NOW" mindset is a supremely dangerous mix. Again, I believe it is in large part why we find ourselves in the mess we have today.
Post a Comment