A Gallup Poll near the end of the year found 25 percent of people — just one in four — feeling satisfied with how things were going in the United States.
So, there you have it. You and I are probably kindred spirits. And, if you are one of those 1 in 4’s, you just haven’t heard the news yet. It’s easy to look around and see something wrong. No challenge there, but the United States is currently going through a process of unwinding a lot of bad investments. Not just financial investments, but also life-style investments and political investments.
Our financial structure has been gamed and fiddled with until it can’t wring out one more penny. State & local governments are finding that out, too. Rupert Murdoch tells us that broadcast television, “free TV” if you will, is not profitable unless we pay for it. The costs of production are too high. Likewise, state and local governments talk about rasing taxes, further. It never occurs to them that perhaps we should cut the costs of producing that television show, or cut back on the funding for those pet programs. That perhaps government shouldn’t be doing everything, if for no other reason than that government can’t do it very well in many cases. Likewise, perhaps there’s too much television already and we should not be expected to prop up a bloated broadcast bureaucracy. Everybody has their pet programs, of all sorts of subjects.
At the same time, this is a resilient country, populated with ingenious hard working people. To my mind, the free market works, and anything that interferes with the free markets is not necessary and part of the problem. Also, this is a country that, when left alone, generally sees the bright side of life and acts accordingly. To be sure, there are the doom and gloom types. Presumably they are one of those 1 in 4’s, too. Just depends upon the subject.
It seems so morbid upon reflection, but when the Challenger exploded in 1986 as it was blasting off, there was a sobering moment. And, then the jokes began to roll. No need to recount them, but it was America’s response to a horrible event that would frame our lives in that time. Or, consider a bond trader’s response to a brief stock market rally after a long rumbling fall in the early 1990’s: “A dead-cat bounce.” Today, it is “Fruit of the Boom”. The bond traders always seem to come up with the morbidly funny stuff. Go figure.
The fact is that our current political leadership has failed. Much of what makes for political success is no longer successful. When the music stops, you sit down and wait for it to start again. Many of our “leaders” are now heading for the exits before we do it for them. The health care debacle has to be passed, because too much attention has been paid to it by the entire country. To not pass something would be to admit the obvious, that the current political model no longer works. So, what to do?
That will be the measure of how good a country we really are. When the going gets tough, will the tough get weird? We’ll see. Certainly there are those out there who can competently lead our country, but will they step up to bat? Will the people give them a chance to correct things? Will we get some political demagogue like Hugo Chavez? Or will we get leadership that says “I have an idea. Follow me.”
We’ll see.
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