Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Are we all voting in 'The New Dark Ages?'

It's been said that we get the government we deserve.  If we continue to vote for free bread and circuses as did the ancient Romans for a few centuries, without consideration of the costs, then we will get what the Romans got: ruin.  Downfall.  

Obamacare was sold to us as free health care for all Americans.  I am an American, and Obamacare is certainly not free to me.  My premiums have doubled, and my deductibles have tripled.  Free? Not even close.  And yet Barack Obama was re-elected by wide margins based on these false promises.  Of course, some Americans are getting free care, but it is at the cost of other Americans such as me getting hammered.  I would not call that kind of free health care free.

Obama has been on a green rampage now since his initial inauguration in 2008.  He warned coal companies during that campaign that his goal was to bankrupt them, in favor of unproven and costly wind, solar and other alternative energy sources.  Energy costs, other than oil, have soared since 2008.  The only reason oil is cheap right now is through technology that Obama despises: fracking.  He is certainly scheming as we speak to put an end to that, you can bet your bottom dollar.  

One way all socialists (including Obama) appeal to the masses is to provide social programs (welfare, Obamacare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, Obamaphones, and on and on....), and pay for these costs through transfer of wealth in the form of taxes and gutting the military.  The American armed forces are now at their weakest and smallest stance since World War II.  

Accordingly, American involvement in festering hot spots around the world that threaten our allies and world stability is minimal.  To fill that leadership void, rotten actors such as Russia, China, Iran and ISIS have all stepped forward to grab whatever power and land is now available, now that American power has withdrawn.

We indeed get the government we deserve.  Unfortunately, the silver cloud  in all of this chaos created by Obama and his Democrat party philosophy is that things will get so bad that it will in time negatively affect those constituencies that in the short term have benefited from all of these flawed socialist policies.

The health care system in the U.S., once the best in the world despite its warts, will get overloaded by those clamouring for 'free' care.  The only way that an overloaded system can cope is by either restricting access, or by rationing services.  Both are now happening, and oldsters who need these services most are feeling the brunt.  They will start to get the message that all of this free stuff is killing them.  An unfortunate silver cloud here.

All of this punishment meted out to the coal and oil industries will drive the costs of energy up to the point that heating a retirees house during the winter will require a home heating loan.  Another unfortunate silver cloud, as in time people will rebel against such policies.

Most oldsters remember the days when they could count on interest payments from structured certificates of deposit bearing 6% annually and greater.  They haven't seen those days in decades now. Their money may as well be stuffed in a mattress in the face of a 2 year CD now paying about one half of one percent interest: 50 basis points.  Which rounded to the nearest significant number is about zero.  Another silver cloud amid the ruins of what used to be what oldsters considered their 'Golden Years.'  These years are turning from gold to granite.  It is just a matter of time before these oldsters grab their walkers, teeter on down to the polling places and vote for a better future.

The ancient Romans never figured it out, and while half the population of the Roman empire was watching their free circuses and eating their free bread, the Visigoths showed up and sacked Rome around 410 A.D., and Rome was no more.  

And the Dark Ages began.

I will not live to see how things turn out for the U.S.  We still have time to see what socialism has done to past fallen civilizations, and that without a change in course, the same thing will slowly happen here.  We can either turn against this pathology that is socialism, or we will see the New Dark Ages born.

It's hard to predict which future will prevail.  

9 comments:

LL said...

The pendulum has a way of swinging. We can see it swinging now with the emergence of "outsiders" in the lead in the Republican and Democratic Parties. Even Hillary Clinton is re-branding herself (I think that it's the seventh re-branding) as an outsider because she's a woman - - even though she's the ultimate insider. A wolf in wolf's clothing...

We who lived through the pain and suffering of the Carter Years recall the Golden Age of Reagan. Maybe we'll see that again, or maybe the Visigoths and Vandals will tear the place to pieces. It's difficult to tell how it will all play out.

Fredd said...

LL:

Today's Visigoths and Vandals are radical Islamists. ISIS certainly represents the Visigoth philosphy to the hilt: agree with me, or I hang you from a tree by your intestines. And more often than not, ISIS monsters will simply hang you from a tree by your intestines just for the fun of it all. Visigoths were no different, and the Visigoth chief Alaric and the ISIS poobah al Baghdadi are cut from the exact same bolt of cloth.

I can't say the same about the Russians, as Russian mothers love their children as much as American mothers love theirs, unlike ISIS babies who are useful for strapping bombs to by their mothers.

Ed Bonderenka said...

Well written Fredd.
Posted to FB.

LL said...

I have worked around Russians for a long time and feel that I understand them. Thus, I don't take issue with them quite the same way that many Americans do. Same with the French.

As you point out, Russia is NOT ISIS. The barbarians that are ISIS need to be wiped out, but I still maintain that it would be better if their locals were empowered to do it -- by the Russians or whoever has the guts to manage it. We clearly no longer lack that will judging by who we as a nation choose to lead us.

Fredd said...

During my days monitoring the military activities of the former USSR, there was just way too much evidence that they were highly civilized, humble, prone to mistakes, willing to admit them, and had a national sense of humor much akin to our way of life here in the US. Americans are much more like Russians than most people know.

Kid said...

Yes, very well written, but DARK if I may say so. Here's some good news. We are still armed.

Kid said...

Fredd, Americans as Russians? heck yea. Just ask former KGB agent Brezmanov.

Fredd said...

Kid: well, the RIGHT is still armed. The LEFT hates guns, and thinks that the police will come a-runnin' every time they get a phone call.

Dumber than a box of rocks, those lefties. They don't get it when people say 'better to have a gun and not need it, than to need a gun and not have it.' No truer words were ever spoken, except when Wayne LaPierre of the NRA said "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.'

Kid said...

Fredd, It's always good to point out to the terminally stupid, that more people have been saved by guns than have been wrongly killed by guns. It's like 10000 to 1.