We are now well into the 2013 holiday season and we seem to have survived once again.
Sometimes the news leads you to believe that the current crisis is going to ruin us all. However when the worst thing the news can complain abut is the President taking a picture of himself at a Mandala's funeral, things can't be all that bad.
I think what I find most amusing nowadays is the drama that permeates our society over the silliest things. We don't even get a full 15 minutes of fame anymore, we don't have time for that, although oddly we spend so much time "following" other peoples lives on social media. We have a congress that until recently couldn't seem to agree on whether the sun was shining but they actually passed a budget deal in the house. This has outraged some people on the right
who would prefer to hold most Americans hostage to their ideas.
Extremism is the elevation of one issue above everything else. If you believe that "big Government" is "evil" then you are willing to sacrifice everything to reduce its size. Of course some people may not have a place to live, food to eat or decent health care, but that is not, in their opinion, a concern to government. Of course it depends a lot on what you think government is. If we have a government of the people, by the people and for the people, disliking government is actually disliking people.
They may deny this, but they really do think most people are stupid and lazy and should just go out an make a lot of money. They may end up on the bottom, but if they do its their own fault, they just need to work harder. Of course they do realize that some people are born into poverty or have absent parents, but they can cite examples of people who overcame humble beginnings to become successful. These of course are the one in a thousand who do overcome the obstacles, but certainly their success is not a condemnation of the of the other 999.
It is very hard to imagine a time in history or pre-history where people did not band together for safety. Clearly banding together leads to the need for some sort of rules, we see this in our ape relatives, even if the rules are simply the strongest bosses around everyone else. This is government and society is not possible without it. How much government do we need, that is open to debate, but there is no "correct" answer. We may want more of it or we may want less of it and we have the right in this country at least to pursue our concept, but we also have to accept the fact that compromise is the essence of modern society.
The House of Representatives may have figured that out.
Merry Christmas!
