Friday, February 9, 2018

American Politics 101: If You're Gonna Dance


American Politics 101: If You’re Gonna Dance
P. Schultz

            Below is a link to an article from the NY Times entitled, “Republicans Learn to Love Deficit Spending They Once Loathed.”

            It is a pretty good article but what it doesn’t say is more important than what it says. Here’s the thing: What most Americans don’t understand is that we and our government have made certain political decisions that require, necessitate the kind of spending, the kind of deficits that are the result of this Republican budget. In other words, neither the Republicans nor anyone else can afford to “loath” deficits, except of course rhetorically.

            One, and perhaps the most important political decision we have made is to be a “great nation,” that is, a nation that attempts to “project” its power throughout the world, while maintaining a “robust” economy at home as well as a “military-industrial-surveillance complex” that is deemed not only necessary but desirable. Such a politics of greatness, as I like to call it, is expensive. It must be maintained financially and this requires, as this Republican budget makes clear, embracing deficits, even great deficits. As some like to say: “If you’re gonna dance, you gotta the pay the band.”

            So long as this political decision stands, it does not matter much who is president or whether the Republicans or Democrats control the government. So long as this political decision stands, deficits will occur and will grow. It’s just the nature of “the beast” we have chosen to create. Want a different result? Choose a different kind of politics, say a politics of individual liberty or a politics of justice or a politics of human rights. Until then, “the beat goes on” as we as a nation travel toward debtors’ heaven. Someday payment will come due or, as some like to say: “Just a little old-fashioned karma coming down.”



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