The Possibly Temporary Last Word on This Particularly Focused Subject

Well said thing or two! :) I especially liked what you had to say about investing in an experience. And indeed it does seem insanely illogical to knowingly enfeeble your children by wealth, but then again, everyone always thinks that THEY AND THEIRS will be the exception (this applies to a lot of things too). And yes, a society that would provide opportunity for all—such positivity that would gush with such a thing!

You have brought to mind one of my favorite athletes: Michael Jordan. Here was a man who did not merely coast on his talent, but took incredible talent and then went out and exerted enormous will to not only make that talent better, but to translate it into results. How did he do it? Examples: The first to come to practice and the last to leave. Playing 44 minutes with strickening food poisoning or severe flu and still carrying his team to a win (having had both strickening food poisoning, and severe flu this is all the more amazing to me). Staying focused and willful when all others had lost their focus or morale, and then by force of will and example, infusing others. Getting up from time and time again failing, and yet still wanting to be the one to go to when it was all on the line.

Yet we do carry a lot of cultural myths around with us, and “self-made” is one of them, as you’ve said.

Ah, onto the wrap up! Obama’s lack of executive experience (little different from McCain’s lack) has been telling. He keeps wanting to govern, adapt, be flexible, compromise. He has taken some stances, but then done a poor job of communicating about them, and especially not done a blitz. At other times, he has given way when a stance would have been better. He has seemed to have little focus. His ideas from his book? Well, the most generous thing that could be said is that he has done a poor job of translating them to action.

He gives off a little too much of being the figurehead of a regime whose power is soon to be shattered, its dominance ended. Here’s a really small example: Saccharin. It was being held up in government because while the industry-dominated FDA had approved it, the EPA was holding it up for several concerns. Obama overruled the EPA. Who is he serving, since the EPA’s questions were not answered?

And leadership in this budget crisis? Not too much seen. Hard to believe that just over a decade ago, the worry was that we would pay down the debt too fast, in Obama’s words “limiting the Reserve System’s ability to manage monetary policy.” (187, and a whole ‘nother topic!)

But to round out the picture: “We were told by our President that we could fight two wars, increase our military budget by 74 percent, protect the homeland, spend more on education, initiate a new prescription drug plan for seniors, and initiate successive rounds of massive tax cuts, all at the same time…all while pork barrel projects increased by an astonishing 64 percent.” (187)

I am hard on Obama, and he deserves it in droves. But something he doesn’t deserve is the magic wand expectation. His Republican detractors say to him, every time he brings up the Bush years: “Get over it. It’s your responsibility now, no one else’s. What are you doing to make things right?”

Well, to quote the Church Lady: “How convenient.” People of that administration and their allies did criminal things to this country. Since people can’t seem to identify with what happens to their country as a whole very well, here’s an analogy put in personal terms:

Would you just “get over it,” and just “get to work,” if, while you were away overseas:

All the money (and you sent home everything you made) was confiscated by the bank you sent it to, with no explanation. Your house was then seized by the bank, and the police evicted your wife and 2 kids (one a baby) with no notice. The police then raped your wife repeatedly, shot your baby to death and then tortured your little girl, who screamed pitifully and horribly for hours. Then they beat her to within an inch of her life, and so damaged her she became a vegetable. Arsonists hired by the bank came and burned your car and former house to ashes, and only they could collect insurance money since the cars and house weren’t yours anymore. As soon as word reaches you of all this, you are abruptly fired from your job, and with no money, it takes many months for you to make it back, and upon getting back, you find that you still owe on the house you no longer have and aren’t allowed to declare bankruptcy. The bank will lend you some more money, but are coming to collect pretty soon. Your find your wife so traumatized she is mentally delusional and is in an insane asylum. Your vegetable daughter is being cared for by her grandmother, your mother-in-law, who has no money and has to work at Walmart. The courts have already issued a ruling that any present or future cases by you are invalid. Amazingly and cruelly enough, you find upon getting back that a great many people hate you and blame you for what has happened, and ridicule with hate and contempt everything you say. Many family and friends, to your shock, have turned their backs on you. You find among your remaining family and friends some combination of fear, denial, or despair, even while some of them are in similar situations.

Your mother-in-law says she found a police bullet by your daughter’s bed one night, and so she has said nothing. She was able to get a friendly intern to do an evaluation on your daughter, and he says with expensive surgery, your daughter might recover.

To recap: Everything has been stolen from you. You have no job, no money, no place to live, no car, few friends or family, lots of people despise you or hold you in contempt, your wife is a victimized mental patient, one child is dead and your remaining child is a vegetable who has been obviously threatened to keep you or those who care about her from doing or saying anything (and what could you do or say that would matter anyway?).

Go ahead. “Make things right. Make things better.” But here’s the precondition: You can’t try to hold anyone accountable but yourself. Go.

This is why it is far easier to degrade, wreck, or pervert parts of government, and/or loot the taxpayer, than to actually try to get something positive done or hold the powerful accountable.