For all the talk about the Fiscal Cliff and how our world would end if we didn't avoid going over it, well, here we are. Like the Mayan prediction of the end of the world, it just didn't live up to its billing. But then again, unlike the Mayan thing, going over the fiscal cliff isn't what kills us, its the sudden stop at the bottom.
Here we are ready to watch bowl games, take a day off work, ponder the future, remember the past and eat like starving wolves in advance of those diets we have committed to starting tomorrow, and all the while we are still in free fall.
We hardly notice the rising rocky floor below, content to let time pass. But what is really about to happen will not have much of an impact on ordinary lives unless some in Congress get their way. If that happens then a lot of ordinary lives are going to change.
Workers at factories making supplies for the military will likely lose their jobs. Tax revenues for cities and towns where those companies are located will suffer.
People on federal assistance who are dependant upon certain programs for food, housing and clothing will suddenly be out in the cold, literally.
People with sore backs, worn out knees, and the ravages of years of working combined with advancing age will face a delayed retirement, having justifiabley counted among their retirement plannning their social security benefits and Medicare at a certain age which might be pushed out a few more years.
Roads and bridges and soldiers and sailors will have to get by on rusted support systems without the funds for upgrade and repair.
We will continue to protest the tax hikes that will barely affect our own bottom line, run off chasing red herrings disguised as gun control and all the while we continue to fall.
China gets stronger, the radical Islamists get a stronger foothold in the world, our enemies patiently wait for us to get weaker, to begin fighting among ourselves and when we are so distracted by our own sense of demise that we are no longer on guard against the evil which lurks at our window sills, we will become vulnerable prey.
Is there a fiscal cliff? Yes, of sorts. It wasn't the cataclysmic event we might have envisioned, it wasn't a ball of fire from the heavens, it was more a step into thin air.
What can we do? I think the better question is what should we do. We should call upon the same source of strength which inspired and emboldened our founders, a firm reliance upon God.
We should begin now planning to remove the charlatans in Congress two years from now who pander to our fears, spend more time getting attention than getting things done and who play politics for a living but who have zero experience as problem solvers on the scale which is required.
And we should make it very clear to everybody we meet that Barack Obama is out to divide us. He is not a unite-er, he has calculated ways to pit us against each other and we should no longer fall for it.
We should cancel any subscription we have to main stream news sources. We should turn off the CBS, NBC and ABC news programs no matter whether they are packaged with an extra M or N in their initials.
We should begin reading as much as possible from all sources so that we can inform ourselves, rather than being spoon fed.
And we should get in the face of every politician we can and demand specifics. Bobbing and weaving should no longer be tolerated.
You see, I am a Kentuckian. I grew up under the flag and the motto of "United we Stand, Divided we Fall".
Our nation is divided, no longer united, and from my perspective here over the Fiscal Cliff I can only ask: what else should we have expected than to fall?
Beautifully said Marcus.
Posted by: Karmen | January 01, 2013 at 10:29 AM