The High Wire Act That Is America These Days

There are a number of reasons why I write so much about America but the key reasons are: 1. That I grew up spending a lot of time there and have a fondness for the country and 2. Now that I am retired, a lot of my investments are in the US market and probably more than most Americans have invested in it.

When I was young and stupid, I thought of America as basically a good country that was out to save the world from the scourge of communism. But as I grew older and learned more about the country, I started to understand that I was wrong.

America is a country that has two purposes, one related to the other. The first purpose is to protect the countries that have resources that America needs and 2, to use those resources to create all kinds of jobs and taxes and a culture of mass consumerism in the country.

The threat of communism was way down the list if it was on the list at all.

There have always been voices that spoke out against this economic imperialism, but they were never given any real credence by the mass of American people who were basically politically ignorant. The big picture was hard for them to grasp. And many of those who did grasp it tended to ignore it because they had a vested interest in sustaining it.

And the people paid their taxes and got fed a steady diet of high-calorie patriotism. And it was all good until the Vietnam war came along and the chinks in the American armour started to show. And the young people coming of age started to protest and the government’s soft underbelly, thanks to Richard Nixon, became exposed and the dissenting voices started being heard. And the great divide began in earnest.

And both sides dug in. You could see it all play out every week on TV in All In The Family, which really was a microcosm of the whole country. And you could read about it in the news every day.

America’s government has always swung back and forth between the left and the right. But if you look at it objectively, the left-leaning governments were the ones that created the jobs and opportunities, reduced the deficit, and fostered good foreign relations, while the right-leaning governments ran up the deficit and created many fewer jobs and opportunities because their main objective was giving tax breaks to the moneyed interests that supported them and kept the war machine well-lubricated and financed.

Right now, the country is being governed by the left and they are working their way through a worldwide recession that most of the right believe is the government’s fault. And they have used this as part of their bid to take control of Congress. And when you have a willfully ignorant majority of so-called patriots, making the left the enemy isn’t really any sort of uphill work.

And while that may be a small victory for the far right, who now hold a narrow balance of power in the House, it’s anything but a victory for the people of America, because they now get to look forward to two years of obstruction and stagnation and regressive legislation.

Because the right only has one objective, which is to stop the left from doing anything for the country. All they want is power and control. And if history is any indication, they have no real constructive purpose in mind for this power should they get it.