spoiled Americans

Toddler Gone Wild Politics in America


Something happened last week that made me stop, again, and ponder the American landscape. More specifically, the people who litter the landscape with their ignorant misguided views on the economy, health care reform, Sarah Palin and President Obama – just to pick a few out of the multitude of things they whine worry about.

First, I got unfriended on Facebook. Again? That’s hardly new and earth-shattering. True, many of my old high school acquaintances find my political and social views to be of the radical bra burning sort. Given that I don’t wear bras, perhaps I am more old school femi-nazi than I think, but my position is that they are willfully misinformed wusses. Fox News is no substitute for reading and thinking, and in these interesting times, only the informed and forward thinking are going to emerge the least scathed. Our old Civics teacher, the wonderful Kenny Herbst, must rue the time he wasted trying to instill democratic principles in some of us.

My old acquaintance is a tea-bagging sort though he lazily tweets the revolution via his home page rather than take the time away from his middle class pursuits to walk Glenn Beck’s talk.

Like so many of what passes for middle class Americans anymore, he views life entirely from the viewpoint of a toddler.

How does this affect me? What’s in it for me? If my life isn’t in a constant state of material growth – then my government isn’t doing its job! Where’s the expansion? What happened to my prosperity?! It’s the liberals’ fault! Socialism, Will Robinson!!  Socialism! Vote them out! Vote them out!!

I am too harsh? Here is a quote I found via Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. Jill Dorson is a writer, and a former small business owner  thanks to the recession, who voted for Obama and now has buyer’s remorse.

It was clear after just 90 days what a mistake I’d made. My taxes have gone up and my quality of life has gone down. Hope has given way to disgust and I see now that change is simply a euphemism for “big government.”

Like many others, my view is narrow. I vote for the candidate I think will be best for me. I often define myself as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. But above all, I want to feel safe and I don’t want to feel that I am being ripped off. I want a president who inspires me and cares about my contribution to the fabric of the country. I want a president with experience and savvy, a Commander in Chief who puts our country and its citizens first.

I only hope the Republicans can find him the next time around.

Sullivan deemed her a big baby. One of the hordes of the “gimme, gimme” types that make up the lunatic fringe that passes for the Republican party and infects many Independents these days. Newsweek wonders if Americans haven’t become “ungovernable”, a population screaming for change as long as it comes at someone else’s expense.

Ask them not to do for their country because the country exists only to do for them. And that’s not socialism. No sir. Funds and programs directed at the unworthy are socialist. Tax cuts for smallish sized businesses and hard-working middle class ( it still puzzles me how they can ALL be middleclass) people is the American capitalistic way of the Founding Fathers. It says so in The Constitution.

Sullivan points out that there isn’t much one can say to people who view the current economic realities from an enraged teenaged-like narcissism. And Dorson admits that she is just like most people in that she really only cares about how things affect her and what is important to her. Like most of my fellow adults, she has no concept of the greater good or that the long-term is just that. Long.

I am no fan of Obama. I was a Clinton supporter. I still resent the way the Obama campaign never made a play for us, simply expecting us to suck it up and follow him. I never for a minute expected him to swoop into Washington and change the system. The White House changes its occupants, not the other way around. But he was all there was by way of viable options, and I hoped he’d be more of a leader than he’s been so far. Set an agenda. Follow through on more than a few of his promises. If this were “normal” times, I would not be worried. It can take time to find one’s presidential feet, but he has never had the time luxury, and he’s rapidly approaching “time’s up”, I fear.

Why?

Because of my former FB buddy and people like Julie. They don’t have the stamina required to adjust to harder times that are likely to deteriorate a lot bit more in the coming year.

FB Bud threw regular status bar fits about gasoline prices. Clueless about what drives prices, or that gasoline is not oil’s only end product, all he knew was that the cost curtailed his leisure spending. The boat couldn’t be out on the river as often and visits to the casinos were less frequent. His middle-class entitlement lifestyle took a hit.

It was Obama’s fault or Nancy Pelosi’s or the health care reform bill, that “no one needs or wants because health care is something a person needs to take care of himself”. And when he wasn’t thanking God for Glenn Beck and the access to real news at Fox, he harassed those who supplied him with facts by labeling them liberals, whether they were or not. Being informed is a one of the Four Horsemen of the Socialist Apocalypse. News gleaned from factual reporting might be contagious and spoil the milk or kill the neighbor’s cow. Salem nonsense from a constituency that thinks Dan Brown is a great novelist.

Simply being realistic and pragmatic marks a person as liberal or socialist. Or a Nazi.

Expecting the government to keep up entitlements like the Bush tax cuts, Medicare, Social Security or that the states  support services without raising taxes is different. Different indeed. American Infantile Entitlement Syndrome.

This was Sullivan’s summary:

What you have here is big babyism. After the worst downturn in memory, bequeathed a massive and growing debt, two failing wars, a financial sector threatening to bring down the entire economy, Obama has betrayed this person by preventing a Second Great Depression.

We will hear more of these non-sequiturs; the 24-hour news cycle prevents any memory past the last six months; the easy, lazy meme of Obama-the-lefty will be pressed home by FNC/RNC and the MSM will grab onto it because it’s a narrative they can understand and that helps insulate them from charges of bias. That none of this has any direct relationship with economic and political reality is barely relevant.

Tea-baggers, Palinites, ordinary “folk” who believe that if their fair share is dwindling than somehow the system has abandoned them and gone socialist. Americans have gone toddler. Look for it in the straight to DVD section soon.

Kid in a Candy Store


I used to shop at a grocery chain called Hy-Vee when I lived in Des Moines. Open 24hrs seven days a week except for Christmas it could boast of being a fairly full-service venue. Pharmacy. Starbucks. Bank that keep the same hours pretty much. And a nicely stocked health food section to appeal to the conscious eaters among us. I took it for granted. The Safeway I use now is very nice. The people are nice and most know me on sight in and out of the store now but to give you an example of the difference in service level I will tell you this little story. The Safeway has new shopping carts. They are the small two-tiered ones for people who won’t or can’t fill the bigger carts. I was pleased to see them. I missed them because I had used them quite a bit back in Des Moines. The clerk at the Safeway commented to me about them as I checked through one day last week. She thought they were marvelous. A kind of sliced bread thing. It was quaint and when I agreed that they were wonderful, I also mentioned that I had used them before where I used to live. She was amazed. She thought they were some new innovation in grocery carts. Shopping in Canada is not like shopping in the U.S. whether it be groceries or clothing or home improvements. The shelves in Canada can be bare for a time while awaiting the next truck and given the lack of any kind of worker in Alberta sometimes that can be a long wait.

 

So today, Rob and I went grocery shopping for Easter dinner at the Hy-Vee near our bed and breakfast. The first thing I did was get a chai to drink while I shopped, and I can do this back home too, but though it is a good chai at the Safeway, I have yet to have a chai anywhere in Canada that tastes as yummy as in the U.S. We started out in the produce and by the time we’d moved on to the next area, my eyes were as big as saucers, I swear. The more time I spent wandering the supermarket aisles, the more like a deer in the headlights I became. There were so many aisles and each crammed with oodles of choices. Oodles. And cheap too.

 

Rob and I read a lot about the tanking U.S. economy but haven’t yet seen much evidence of it. My mother complained about food prices going up but they were still far cheaper than what we play up North, and it didn’t seem to me that lack of anything was keeping people away, The grocery was packed as was the J.C. Penney’s we’d visited earlier in the day for a sale. Plenty of merchandise and people willing to buy it.

 

The clothes shopping I have done, just today, puts any shopping trip I have gone on in Canada to shame. Remember my Old Navy visit a while back? I went to Old Navy this evening. The shelves were stocked. There was stuff on sale everywhere. I left with a pair of sweats and three shirts for under $30 U.S. I was almost giddy with shopping fervor. I could have shopped all night, not even bought anything and be completely content. People here, and I was once one of them, have no idea what kind of a good life is all around them. Hip deep in cheap food. Affordable clothing. Even the gas is cheap. $3.19. That’s the same price as six months ago and certainly cheaper than anything we have ever paid in Alberta or B.C.

 

It’s such a spoiled life here.