State of disunion

 Have I been in a coma for the last several years, or have we not been experiencing the worst economic strife since the Great Depression? Aren’t we still at war on two major fronts without any clear objectives for success? Didn’t our politicians just get done wasting the last six months deliberating health-care reforms in secret, wasting invaluable time and money, only for all of it to go nowhere?
    Shouldn’t politicians be walking around with their heads down and their tails between their legs, or are our politicians in a position to congratulate themselves for a job well done?
   Well, if you tuned into the State of the Union address last Wednesday night before Obama’s speech, you never would’ve guessed that Main Street has been experiencing its fair share of serious problems.
   Wednesday night was self-gratifying politicians night in our nation’s Capitol; it was a circus, and in full attendance were bureaucratic clowns wearing expensive three-piece suits and sporting gigantic, shit-eating grins. The only thing that was missing was the cotton candy.
   If ordinary people are in denial about the possibility that our government has been overtaken by a two-sided bourgeois aristocracy that doesn’t really identify with the general public — I think a head examination or a mandatory current-events prep course is in order after bearing witness to Wednesday night’s eye opener.
   There wasn’t a sign of grimace, frustration, desperation or anything along those lines on the faces of those in attendance at the Capitol on Wednesday night.
   It’s almost as though the great actors of Washington had just attended a Tony Robbins motivation seminar and weren’t yet ready to accept the state of affairs that general America is going through right now.
   I wouldn’t have been smiling or acting happy if I was one of them; they’ve all been epic failures at their jobs for the last ten years straight now.
   While they bicker and fight each other like kindergartners in business suits, we’re the ones who suffer for their failed policies and inaction; we’re the ones that are going to have to pick up the tab when they retire from their public, partisan playhouse.
   The State of the Union address was almost like watching a corporate softball game between the former executives of Enron and AIG. There’s just something about them having a joyous time after all the shit they piled onto us over these past ten years ($100,000 of debt per family) that really makes me cynical.
   As Obama walked down the aisle, he took his time shaking hands with members of his own party, while Republicans looked on with contempt from the other side of the Capitol, as though their continued stubbornness following his election had been in the American people’s best interest all along. Smiling, finger pointing, hand gestures — it was like Obama was Rudy after winning the big game for Notre Dame and there couldn’t have been a more fitting occasion for the stadium to break out in a ten-minute standing ovation.
   After Obama took his place behind the podium and everyone had finally stopped clapping, Pelosi then went ahead and announced that the President of the United States had arrived, as though the last ten minutes of hand shaking and smiling had been nothing more than a figment of our imagination. 
   The nostalgia was just too much for me to handle. I would rather down ten Jägerbomb’s before an early morning run than watch that self-congratulatory dog-and-pony show again. It was absolutely revolting. 
   If Washington’s actors want to claim they resonate with American values and feel for the “tough times Americans are going through,” then they should share in the suffering just like everyone else is.
   If politicians want to represent the American people, they should break down their benefits and powers so public office isn’t anywhere near as lucrative or gainful as it is now.
   Heck, when there isn’t big money to be made out of a job which allows for secrecy and easily profitable corruption, what will attract secretive and corrupt people to public office in the first place?
   If politicians bore any resemblance to the American people whatsoever and if they had a vested interest in the welfare of their nation, their salaries wouldn’t be $186,000 a year and Senators wouldn’t get a pension for being elected to public office. Their salary should be that of the national average (about $50,000 a year); if they want to get paid more, they should have to earn it by improving the general welfare of the nation’s majority (instead of making things worse for “the people” and loaning money to the elite minority).
   They should not be allowed to vote on how much money they receive, or what health care benefits they get. These factors should only “change” based on the changes of the state of the union.
    If there is no national health care plan and if the average salary for working American families does not increase, then those who represent us should have to purchase private health insurance and live within their means just like the very same “people” they claim to represent when assuming public office.
   The annual deficit is the figure that gets brought up all the time in the media. It stands at 1.4 trillion currently. However, the national deficit of the United States stands at 12,281,485,883,548.01 dollars or twelve trillion, two-hundred and eighty-one billion, four-hundred and eighty-five million, eight-hundred and eighty-three thousand, five-hundred and forty-eight dollars and one cent as of Jan. 30.
   That number alone is difficult enough to comprehend or say in one breath, but what is really incredible is that things have gotten progressively worse for our nation since 2000, when our national deficit was in check.
   So where has all that money been going over these last ten years? I doubt anyone can give a simple answer, because nobody seems to know. What is known is that we’re going to have to pay for the mistakes that were made on behalf of those who drove our nation’s economy into the ground in the first place! Talk about accountability and consequences. And more importantly, how is continually unchecked fiscal irresponsibility going to solve a problem that was caused by unchecked fiscal irresponsibility to begin with? It isn’t and it can’t. You’d have better success at losing 300 pounds of fat by eating more and moving around less than you would at solving the largest deficit in the world by spending more and doing less.