The following is a recent column I wrote for our local newspaper, The Spectrum.
This is my first column as a member of the Spectrum Writers Group and I appreciate the opportunity to be able to express some thoughts on a regular basis. My wife and I have lived in Southern Utah for more than thirteen years and feel blessed to own a small piece of a wonderful desert community in which to share our lives with a diverse group of friends and neighbors.
We are in what I consider one of the protected classes. We have Social Security and Medicare along with sufficient to savings to retire comfortably when we choose. The Republicans are reassuring us that our entitlement benefits are secure and that any changes in middle class benefits will only be imposed on those younger than 55 years of age.
Somehow I feel I’m being bought off. Should I not be concerned about my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren?
Just when the world could benefit from an example of a mature functioning democracy, we are reaching the nadir (I hope) of a three decade decline during which our national debt has increased steadily, our income and wealth disparity has grown to proportions not seen since the Great Depression, our schools have declined in comparison to other developed nations, our infrastructure is in disrepair, one percent of us fight in three wars, among other problems.
Our political leaders have just ended a several months long kabuki dance risking a catastrophic financial collapse while providing a distraction from the hard work needed to build a better future for our nation. They left town neglecting the needs of the 4000 FAA employees furloughed because of lack of funding and risking the loss of 70,000 jobs by contractors as work on our deteriorating airports grinds to a halt while losing $1 billion in aviation tax revenues.
We can do better. Our government functioned reasonably well during the five decades preceding the eighties. We recovered from the Great Depression, defeated our enemies in World War II, converted from a war time to a peace time economy educating and reemploying the returning veterans, reduced the deficit from 100 percent of GDP to about 35 percent, reduced the income disparity between the top ten percent and bottom ninety percent from 50 percent to about 33%, improved our schools and much more.
Then in the eighties we decided that government was the problem and have made it so since. I think it was President Obama who wrote that our politics are too small for the problems we face. I disagree. Our politics have become too large and factional to be effective.
We no longer respect or listen to those with differing political views. Compromise, the process by which our democracy was formed, has become a dirty word and a sign of weakness.
In the words of a great philosopher: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
We are a better people than this.
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