Monday 17 February 2014

The Bottom Line


Among other clamorings for donations from me to their worthy causes (I never realized how many there were in this country until I got involved in the scene.  And they keep growing, as my address gets added to other mailing lists.  It's cancerous), I have ben invited - along with my "best possible contribution" of course - to sign a petition "Of Support For Senator Ted Cruz's S.177 Obamacare Repeal Act".  It seems a reasonable thing to do.  

"Remember when Obama promised you could keep your doctor?  Or your health insurance?  Or that he wouldn't raise your taxes?  Or when he said premiums would go down?…

"Did you know that the IRS is employing 16,500 new personnel - adding a massive deficit-boosting $881 million a year to their existing budget…

"…just to quiz you about your health?

"Not only are they going to send you yet another tax form to fill out - you'll also be expected to share private, personal health information with government bureaucrats…" 

('Ah.  Meds for depression  No guns for you…')

So, who's to blame for all this?  The Democrats?  But who helped create the illusion of the federal government being able to spend and spend and spend?? To make the world safe for Halliburton & Co.*  And to use the taxpayers' money to bail out banks "too big to fail".  Which then used the money, not to give loans to Main Street - the sector where most of the bailout money came from in the first place - but to give their Masters of the Universe the bonuses that they make huge bets in the money markets to earn…

There's plenty of blame to go around.  Including generically on the human vices of such as greed and envy.  But there is a substantive bottom line in America on this issue: the Little Guy has seen what Government does for the Big Guy, and has been seduced by that favoritism example to want some of that free money too, as long as it's being handed out; and since the Little Guys outnumber the Big Guys by a wide margin, the government spending has caused the nation to go bankrupt.  Literally as well as figuratively.   

So, I ask again (a little more deeply this time): who, or what, is at fault?  You could say 'the system,' or 'human nature'.  But that sort of response would be a copout.  A better answer is in two parts:

1) Without a vision, the people perish.

2) We are all individuals, making our individual decisions in life, traveling our own individual paths back to Source.  We stand, or fall, by the exercise of our own free will.  And will incur our own karma accordingly.  Because this is a just universe.  And because actions have consequences.

And sometimes, they amount to a collective karma as well.  As in nations.  And America is not exempt from that law.      

It used to be considered, by its citizenry and by the world's citizenry, to be exceptional.  It isn't anymore.  It has proven to be just like any other country.  A follower (of trends). Not a leader.

There's still time, for it to fulfill its destiny, as a light unto the nations, leading the way into a new, sunlit world for humanity.

But barely.   

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* That is, the vaunted military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us about. 
     And P.S.: He was going to add the word '-government' to the expression, but figured at the last moment that he had already 'bitten off enough to' take on in that declaration.  And to say, that his listeners had been given to do so as well.
     And now, in this warning-fulfilled day and age, it is ours to take up that challenge, cautioned us about those 50-odd years ago now, by our nation's leader then.
     I, for one such son of the country, accept the challenge.


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