The Political Septic Tank is Overflowing

By Grant Davies

When something goes wrong, even if it is an accident, the question is always the same. Whose fault is it?

There certainly is no dearth of contestants for the blame game. In fact, if it were an Olympic sport most of us could vie for a medal.

So where do we begin when we want to list the starting line-up for the finals of the contest called "whose fault is it that the country is disappearing into the political sewerage system?"

The obvious place would be with some of the all star players like the fat guy with the microphone or the comedian who pretends to be a news anchor. Those two might be appointed the captains of the opposing squads, but the teams wouldn't be hard to fill out from either the left or the right of the "entertainment" world.

Maybe a better place is the "news" world. MSNBC or FOX would be rich pools of talent from which to recruit. But that's no good, because they have melted in with the above group until there is very little distinction between them anymore.

Politicians would be the third place to look. They have taken the blame game from a sport to an art form. And the "new" media, blogs like this one, or those on the left or the right can't be overlooked either. I plead guilty as charged for my part in the crime.

Republicans blame Democrats, liberals blame conservatives, and Obama blames everybody.

TV pundits tell us that everyone, or at least most of us, want the politicians to be less partisan and "get things done." But even if that's sometimes true, it's only if it's what we want done.

The most overlooked group to scout from for the "blame team" is the same group who actually deserves the blame. Curiously, it's the same group who is to blame for all the incompetent dolts who have been elected to represent us, and by extension, all the problems we have. You might hazard a guess on who is in that group. A mirror might be helpful if you get stumped.

So whose side are you on? What team do you belong to?

Are you one of those who blame "Dimocrats" because "they can't think logically and just want to take things from some people and give it to others in the name of fairness?" "And everyone knows that Democrats/liberals think that everyone else is too stupid to run their own lives." Right?

Or are you one of those who believes that anyone who is a Republican/conservative is a knuckle dragging moron who just wants to control your life with their version of morality while enriching the already rich with the labors of the poor and downtrodden? Oh, and they are racists too.

Liberals are "for the little guy", while conservatives are just for big businesses and rich people who don't pay their fair share of taxes. Right? "Obama is going to fix things that George W. Bush screwed up." "And he's a black guy (sorta) and I voted for him, so I must be an enlightened person who wants progress!"

Conservatives are for America while liberals hate our country and think we should be just like the enlightened Europeans. "Bush was fighting the bad guys and Obama is surrendering our exceptionalism and trying to make the USA into a socialist utopia." And anyone on any form of government assistance is a lazy slob who wants nothing more than the fruits of someone else's work.

Of course none of those attitudes apply to everyone on either team, nor does it describe what you or I think. After all, we are above all of that, it's only the other fellow who is so petty and ignorant. At some point, commonsense needs to prevail over the childish distractions all of us have fallen for at one time or the other.

One thing is certain however. The time for all that stuff is coming to a fairly rapid end, at least temporarily. It will be pushed aside at some point in the near future as our currency collapses under the weight of the state and national debt. When monetization causes everyone's money and savings to be worthless, all bets are off and the game is over. Both teams lose, and the other guy's attitudes don't matter much anymore.

A little math and a dose of commonsense will tell anyone (who abandons the above notions for a while) that even if we confiscated all the wealth of all the rich people we couldn't sustain the current system and its overwhelming costs. We need to spend less, a lot less. And we need to start right now (not in a few years or over a decade) before Greek style riots, or worse, begin.

If we don't, surely we will drown in the political sewerage we all have contributed to at one time or another.