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My perception is that this long paralyzing decession has sapped much of the animal spirits out of the entrepreneurial class in America - a class whom with each passing year, methinks, is growing smaller as a percentage of population and who is becoming increasingly discouraged about their future prospects. We've more Americans that want to make a difference, but fewer with the intellectual autonomy, character and drive to do so. President Obama mirrors this new emerging, less competitive, individualistic and independent national character.  The majority of people now either want or need to be taken care of to some greater or lesser degree.  The people who drive our economy, the people who create jobs and aspire to make life better for the many, the people who pay 40% of the taxes, the people who end recessions see an America, the bulk of whose citizens are shunning responsibility and in respect to fixing the country's most serious problems, have no sense of practicality whatsoever: they see an America that is made up of more people looking to procure aid from the system than not, who care more about being green and narcissisticaly feeling good about themselves than working long hours*, doing what free markets dictate needs to be done, or getting materially ahead and raising a family.

There are now two generations of Americans most of whom don't even desire the American Dream as it has been known in the past; a house in a good neighborhood, two or three beautiful kids, a job with a solid and respected company ( not many of those left by their measure! ) Virtually all of their scarce disposable dollars are being spent on $4 coffees, the next generation of smart phones, Netflix subscriptions, video games, gym memberships and sun glasses.  They have been conditioned to be deeply suspicious about the profit motive. They believe greed is the primary economic mal de force. An America with nominal economic growth is OK by them.  Materialism just ain't chic. Better no economic growth than driving more carbon-fueled cars around, fracking our beloved terra firma, increasing the population, suppressing anti-democratic uprisings around the world, bio-engineering our food supply, having uninsured citizens, consuming a greater share of the world's resources, or increasing inequality.  These are our new national values.  These are the values Obama mirrors.  These are not the values required to build a new and prosperous America.  These are the values of national economic decline. 

The only thing sustainable about sustainability is stagnation...

*Speaking of working long hours have we ever had a President that works less than this one?  


M.D.T.

Monsters From the Id

It's more than likely impossible to reasonably explain mass societal self-delusion on an historical scale.  Our present toxic, socio-psycho-cultural-economic declinations reminds me a great deal of a central  theme from the great classic sci-fi film, Forbidden Planet, where we, like the advanced Krell civilization, are having the foundations of our free society destroyed by our own unconscious 'monsters from the Id'. How much personal liberty are we willing to relinquish and how much economic and intellectual self-punishment are western societies willing to self-inflict to absolve themselves from their original sin.... the God-given gift/curse of self-consciousness.... and the accompaning both enviable and pitiable awareness that we, as a species, forever and intractably, stand alone outside of the natural order and all of creation looking in - that we can never truly understand our role in the natural order - that we'll forever be, from ourselves, at our very essence ... intruders.



Wyatt Earp: What makes a man like Ringo, Doc? What makes him do the things he does?  Doc Holliday: A man like Ringo has a great empty hole through the middle of him. He can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to ever fill it.  Wyatt Earp: What does he need?  Doc Holliday: Revenge.  Wyatt Earp: For what?  Doc Holliday: Being born.

From the movie Tombstone

M.D.T.

Ultimate Libertarian Bumper Sticker

SO WHAT'S YOUR LATEST PLAN FOR ELIMINATING ALL OF HUMAN SUFFERING?

M.D.T.