The weekend morning talkers are all abuzz with calls for civility and bipartisianship. My feeling is that all these Rodney King wannnabes are running for their lives. One of my favorite expressions is "Lets do the math." So, lets do it.
At last count there were 308,745,538 good folks living in this country. Thank goodness we counted last year - I'd hate to leave anyone out. If we count all the members of the house, senate and the really high eschelons of the executive and judicial branches the total comes in right at 617.75. (The .75 is because one of them is not quite as important as he thinks he is.)
I don't know if Timmy Giethner counts as high ranking or not but you can see where I'm going with this. We can darn well make the correct number of biggies in Washington 617.75 if we feel like it just by choosing who is big and who is not, and 617.75 is the perfect number to use.
Dividing the population of this country by 617.75 shows that only one lone nut with a gun and a grudge out of every half million folks is needed to wipe out the leaderhip of this nation. Think about that. If only 2 people in a million blow a fuse and blow out the brains of the nearest bigwig we would be rudderless. STOP! Think about that again - our government is a very delicate thing. I dare say the "important" members of our society spent all of last week doing the math and they are scared to the point that trips to the bathroom for a "number 2" are pointless.
So the Patricians have proclaimed this to be "National Calm Down The Plebeians" week. I can still remember the Summer and Fall of 2010. Every other minute some politician was promising to Fight For Me if only I would vote for him. Not since Superman fought for truth, justice and the American way every Saturday morning had I heard so much violence promoted as a desirable action. Well, these pols may just get that for which they were yearning not so many months ago. They just may be in for a good fight, maybe even a revolution, in the not too distant future. I say that because I'm afraid NCDTP week will not catch on.
The foundation for my apprehension was laid by events in Tunisia just this week while we were all looking in the direction of Tucson. Man, it's hard to keep up these days.
It seems an enterprising unemployed guy was trying to sell some fruit so he could get by. The local authorities informed him he needed to purchase a permit to sell the foodstuffs. He was a gentle soul but had no money for the permit. Not wanting to cause a problem, he chose suicide instead of revolution. The echo of that suicide sparked a revolution in the small Arab nation and the president/dictator was forced to flee. Please don't feel sorry for this now homeless dictator. Word has it he managed to take 3,000 pounds of the citizens gold with him so he'll probably be OK.
Most Arab countries are not known for positive stances in matters concerning human rights, and revolutions are almost unheard of in that part of the world. In fact, they're dang near impossible. The local dictator just rounds up the instigators and lines them up against the wall. The sheer mass of people who needed to be lined up in this case exceeded the wall space of the country so the revolution succeded. The combination of unemployment, hunger and corruption resulted in a change of government there, and the change came almost overnight.
In America, on the other side of the planet, unemployment is rampant. Hunger is pervasive. Corruption exists at the highest levels of our government. That statement is no exeraggeration, Republicans can google Tom Delay and Democrats can do the same with William Jefferson. However, there is a major difference in the two nations - in America every other citizen is armed.
Hoping for any advantage that may accrue, the pols have taken every opportunity to scream and yell at each other for the last couple of decades or so. During election campaigns we are told "Vote for me because the other guy is _____________(insert any pejorative you wish)" They offer no positive reason to give them your vote, they only tell how bad the other guy is. This behaviour has created turmoil and distrust amongst the population and it's no wonder they-that-matter-the-most are now running scared. These politicians and their media campaigns have stoked the American people to the point we trust none of them. They have told us so many times that the other guy is a liar, a crook and probably wears womens underwear, we now believe ALL of them are suspect. If there is a revolution, and I'm thinking the chances are still pretty slim but mounting, the pols and gentry of this country have no one to blame but themselves.
It has taken years of hard work for the pols, bankers and media to get us to this point and it will take more than a week of holding hands and singing to calm the nation down. It's gonna take jobs, affordable housing, more equal distribution of income and a regained sense of fair play and security for us to settle down again. This list is not all inclusive, but even these few things will require more work than I believe the pols are capable of. It's so much easier to point fingers.
If it comes, it comes. But if we follow Tunisia I hope it is because of something other than the cost of a buisness license.
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