Lifting Up Rocks

The bugs always scatter when you lift up a rock be they human or insect.

When I was a boy, mom would put you outside for hours in the summer and completely ignore your pleas to reenter the coolness of the house. In your boredom there was no place you would not look to find something to occupy your time. One place you were always guaranteed a show was the underside of a rock. When you lifted it all manner of bugs would scatter and a few worms would disappear into the damp earth.

Our current economic situation is as if somebody lifted a rock off our society. All the bugs are running for cover but in this case there is no place to run. Famously self-sufficient America is finding out that self is not very sufficient when all that has held so many selves up for years was an illusion of wealth and not the real thing. Now the illusion has evaporated like George Bush’s popularity and all that’s left is the reality that we weren’t prepared for this. It’s truly a defining moment.

CEO’s of car companies showed up in Washington hat in hand asking for money that not only doesn’t belong to them, it doesn’t belong to the government they seek it from. As I’ve pointed out before there is nothing in the Constitution that gives the government power to make loans of tax dollars. But, so what? The very dollars were taxed and created with non-constitutional powers so why quibble about it now? Even pointing this out has no real effect on most people. What should outrage them strikes them as nit-picking on your part for bringing it up. That’s because once people become more used to de facto authority than legitimate authority, their desire to tell the difference becomes the same as their desire to get up and go jogging at 5 a.m. in thirty degree chill.

In politics, a de facto leader of a country or region is one who has assumed authority, regardless of whether by lawful, constitutional, or legitimate means.

So there was a big stink about the fact that the automaker CEO’s flew to Washington on private jets to beg. People pointed out that, if you’re using private jets to go beg for money then you obviously don’t get it, it being that beggars shouldn’t appear rich while begging.

Uh, it’s a little late, folks, to come down with a case of the shoulds and should nots when you’ve ignored all the blatant violations up to now. Maybe the CEO’s don’t get it. Maybe politicians don’t get it. But since we’ve allowed them to go on for years without getting it we can hardly expect them to get it now, especially since we obviously never did. Besides, if you had a private jet already gassed up, tell me you’d drive or take a bus just to make people think you were humble when you weren’t used to caring what they thought anyway.

The whole thing is so painful to watch. On the outside people trying to act as if they’re asking the caring and weighty questions while on the inside they’re addicted to cheap drama and queue card questions. On the one hand they can’t deny the hard realities that we now face. On the other their habits and the familiar ruts in which their thoughts run are still slaves to an irrational belief that America can maneuver its way out of any problem as long as we ignore it long enough. There’s a gospel tune that says “trouble don’t last always.” Maybe not. But it doesn’t have to. It only has to outlast you. This time trouble ain’t going away. And the reason it ain’t going away is because we set the stage for it a long time ago and chose not to think of consequences. So trouble feels it has an open invitation. It’s a 300 pound man sitting on our couch eating, burping and farting who ain’t even thinking about leaving.

Here in North Carolina they say there are only about four months left before the unemployment trust fund runs out. Now, this is a very greedy state that never met a tax or fee it didn’t like. It will see to it that the citizens struggle under tax burdens and that the governor’s wife has a funky good time on those same citizens’ dime. They’re running around talking about “belt tightening” like fat folks contemplating liposuction instead of dietary discipline. The reality that they may just have to be responsible with other people’s money is creeping up on them like a tiger in tall grass. I hope that tiger rips out a lot of cowardly throats.

Everybody’s crying “where is the money we need going to come from”. Don’t suggest that maybe, just maybe, government might need to start thinking about living within its means the way a family has to when money isn’t available. Such thinking is unbearable to them, like sunlight to a vampire.

But since the rock has been lifted there is no place the sunlight isn’t reaching. The bugs are running back and forth, their hearts failing to find that all the old places they used to hide have disappeared like the illusions they always were. All the old explanations and lies no longer provide cover even though they’re still using them; even though they still fire them off like a soldier in the heat of battle still firing a weapon out of ammunition.

All predictions point to a long time of sorting all this out. But the reason for that is not because it has to take a long time. If the adjustment time stretches like melted cheese it’s because of our addiction to lies and mass produced fictions. We can’t handle truth cold turkey so, like true addicts, we bang on the fiction dealer’s door in the wee hours begging for just enough faith crack to make it through the day. We tell him we don’t have any money right now but our credit is good even though nobody’s credit is good. Yep, it’s gonna be awhile before this monkey is off us.

Every now and then while driving on the interstate I see drivers acting stupid, jumping in and out of lanes at high speeds and running up on other peoples’ bumpers. When I see this I just slow down and let some distance get between me and the fools. Many may not be able to avoid getting involved in the wreck these crooks have caused, so pervasive are its effects. But everybody can choose to get off the crack they’ve sold us for years.

That may be painful but it’s the first step to finding a better place to live than under a rock.