Curmudgeon's Corner
cur-mud-geon: anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
Eye of the Beholder - Updated
The ‘eye of the beholder’ is magical. Many of us watched the same State of the Union address last evening and virtually all of us saw what we expected and desired to see. Not much magic after all, I suspect; just human nature.
Our President made the perfunctory points that essentially opened his campaign for 2012. His delivery was fine, not as good as some earlier performances, but fine for such a gathering. His subjects were predictable in that he has to re-position himself to appear more ‘centrist’ if he expects to gain that second term.
I marvel, frankly, at how blind some can be to what appear to be stark realities to others. That must be a gift of the politician. For example, how can Sen. Reid say that Social Security is solvent for the next forty years when he must realize this isn’t true when we can see just saw the curves crossing in 2017 meaning that Social Security is now in the red until the money runs out in 2037 without changes being made? He doesn’t live under a rock in the middle of nowhere. He is at the heart of our political world.
Before you think I’m totally daft, I admit that I understand this is “politics” as we have come to know it. That statement says much about the ‘state of our union’. We send 535 people to the fairytale world that is Washington, D.C. and we expect that they’ll avoid contracting the dread ‘big government can do it all’ fever.
The Democrat positioning was expected. The Republican positioning was expected. One seems destined to keep us on the easier road that leads to a bad place. The other seems destined to put us on the tougher road that we know is probably necessary but which we resist due to the temptation of the easier road.
The real question is this: Have we finally gotten to the point where the majority of us believe that we must take the bad-tasting medicine, or are we still content to listen to the siren song that leads us down the path to even worse times?
Few of us believe we can borrow and spend our way to prosperity as individuals. We know better than that because the piper demands to be paid. Yet, many of us seem to think that doesn’t apply to our government; we are all too anxious to avoid that bad-tasting medicine even as we know deep down that we’re making a mistake.
What did you see last evening?
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