By Vern Holmquist
I always am happy to hear from my readers. Even if their thinking differs from mine, it means they are thinking, which in the case of politics is somewhat rare. Frankly, I don’t think much about politics either, but once in awhile I sit back to take a good look at what’s happening. It appears that these are the facts:
Six years ago our country was on the brink of the worst depression our economy would know. Our national debt was out of hand, unemployment was high, and we were engaged in an unwinable war in countries we knew nothing about. Even way back then we had an immigration problem, and then we elected a black President… Today our economy is surpassing that of any other nation in our world, corporation profits are at an all-time high, and stock and bond markets are setting new records. We have a few bankers and financiers incarcerated and/or paying heavy fines, the fast shuffle mortgage schemes have been shutdown, and we have created more jobs than all the other industrial nations put together. We have gained respect among the nations of our world as witnessed in recent summit meetings, but we have a black President. Gee! How bad can things get?
My office received a letter pointing out how wrong I was reporting the demise of the Republican Party after the 2012 general election, and that that party is in control of the House, and next year of the Senate. But is there still life in the party? The fracture between the radically conservative Tea Party and the sometimes-compromise-with-the-Democrats other part of the party is so great that it is now a basketcase. In spite of all their victory speeches and threats against our black President, they’ve done nothing of consequence, thought nothing was better than the wrong thing, and, as has been their habit. went on a taxpayer paid vacation. Ho hum!
All of this is very confusing, I’m not even sure of the meaning of the different tags we put on people. Like LIBERAL seems to mean we should dump a lot of our old ideas and standards and try a new approach to solving our problem. There are those giving a lot of thought – and possibly good thoughts – about how we should change our priorities. Then CONSERVATIVE seems to mean let’s not let the people make decisions (limit access to the polls), let’s keep the money running in the same direction (into the same stagnant pools) – the aristocracy is doing fine, let the peons pick up the tab. Seems PROGRESSIVE means going forward, new ideas, new approach to solving problems … and the opposite of that must be BACKWARD or just motionless. Have a nice vacation.
