So How Did This Happen?

The boomerang article on metroedit got me to thinking about how it happened. So I started digging around and this link at Wiki hits some of it on the head.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Boomer

How did the baby boomers put themselves in the position we are in? Nobody else did it to us but ourselves. We’ve been the majority for quite some time and in reality still are. A good part of it is apathy and not paying attention to what the hell has been going on. Rather than study a politician’s voting history, I believe that the majority of people who go to the polls rely on the 30 second sound bites they see during campaigns. Don’t watch a debate when it’s opposite “Dancing with The Stars.” That seems more important. In a nutshell, it’s called being self-absorbed.

Then we also seem to suffer from short term memory loss quite often. We want to put partisan labels on everything and make it a Democratic or Republican cause. What the heck has happened to just being an American who cares about this country and the issues we face? It gets sickening watching the politicians on C-Span refer to to the party on “the other side of the aisle.” Hell, they should all be required to sit elbow-to-elbow, cheek-to-cheek.

So now we want to be concerned. Some of us have been for a while. Social Security and Medicare for the boomer generation is reaching an alarming stage. We allowed these so called “guardians of our trust” to rape the system and use the money we put into it for as a general fund for other “priorities.” I just went and looked at the Debt Clock again to see where those obligations stand. That’s money this country doesn’t have and we entrusted to them for our old age. You can’t live on it but it was to be a slice of the pie as it was designed to be. Again, a lot of those same self-serving robber barons that continue to be sent to Capital Hill have done their damage.

How is it that polls lately have indicated a majority of Americans are in opposition to issues our politicians want to force down our throats because they think they know best? That’s not why we sent them there, or at least not why I send mine there. We have, at large, allowed them to develop this attitude. If you sit silently by and grouse about it but to yourself and your immediates then that’s your bad and you deserve exactly what they are doing. I have now made a habit of calling people out when they start in on it. I’ll just ask, “Have you sent them a letter or e-mail letting them have it?” I’m sure you know the answer I receive in the majority of the cases.

We’ve become lazy in too many ways. People want the government to solve their problems. That ain’ta gonna happen. The idea of personal responsibility for your life has taken a seat in the balcony. We did that to ourselves, Sad but true. Then when people start standing up and raising hell about what we are seeing and what they are doing and the attitude being taken by all of them about OUR money there is a stampede of criticism about standing up and saying enough is enough. How short sighted can one get.

This whole fiasco with the Cap and Trade has ignited my fuse. First it was bailing out Wall Street and the Auto Industry. Those both basically smack of socialism. I am not anything close to being a socialist myself nor do I think this country wants to travel down that road. Again, polls expressed our outrage but Congress went ahead and did it anyway. People want to blame a President. His is but one voice and can be easily over ridden when common sense should prevail. More partisan crap than common sense if you ask me.

We now know what we have to do to “change” the way we’ve been going. It’s called “kick their asses to the curb.” Not all of them are working against us, just a majority of them are working against the majority of American tax payers rather than for us. They have their special interests and big money contributors to care for and their own investments to protect and move to the forefront.

So how did it happen? It happened, and will continue to happen, because we fail to do anything about it. I do see a bit of awakening though. That’s why I’m personally going to the National Tax Protest. I’m a boomer and the damage has been done to my generation. I take offense that the bozo’s we send to Washington DC are now mortgaging our grandchildren and their children’s future. For what? Immediate gratification?

We need to suck it up and realize that the Federal Government is a huge dinosaur of a bureaucracy that needs to be cut by at least half. That takes a leader, not someone who promises to scrub the bureaucracy from top-to-bottom and then proceeds to expand the reach of the government into our everyday life. That takes sacrifice and being unpopular. The rubber has to eventually meet the road friends and countrymen. It will never be done by spending more money that they don’t have to spend. We now live in a different world than that which the majority of us grew up in. That’s the stark reality of a grave situation.