A local radio station presented one of those cute interviews with little kids (5-7 years old) about What Do You Want for Christmas? I was intrigued that every one of them, regardless of age, regardless of whether or not they could pronounce the brand names correctly, uniformly wanted some rather expensive electronic toy. When asked ?who?s going to pay for all this?? they answered confidently, ?Oh, Santa. He?s making everything.?Think about that. Parents actively connive with commercial outlets to encourage their offspring in this happy delusion: a jolly benefactor from on high will shower goodies down on the good little boys and girls each year, a sort of unearned dividend contingent on an elastic definition of being ?good.? There appears to be no cost and no apparent human responsibility. I must be good, I got presents, hooray! And what of the less fortunate among us, whose children see the largesse in which their age mates wallow, but receive little or nothing themselves for Christmas? Their children can only conclude they have not been ?good,? and do not therefore deserve these unrequited gifts. Receiving an obvious once a year charity drop doesn?t fool them, they know they are second class.
Fast forward: the good little boys and girls, having been programmed in their youth and now confronting adult responsibilities of citizenship, have every right to feel entitled to receive a continued shower of goodies, consuming a disproportionate share of the world?s resources and, if at all possible, not paying for it? or, paying very little, preferably postponing actually paying real money by borrowing the wherewithall, so that with any luck their children will pay, not themselves.
I call this the Santa Claus Syndrome, and it explains much of the political-economic philosophy running rampant around us today. Want a ski vacation? Charge it! Want a top-of-the-line gas guzzling SUV, a small yacht, a fur coat, and a beach front second home? No problem, don?t save up for these things, just draw on your home equity line. Want to have a small pre-emptive war to put a lock on Mideast gas and oil for that SUV? Easy, send other people?s kids to war, pay for it with deficits as far as the eye can see, and the grand kids can pay it off. And then see to it that you and your kids never pay for your toys: let Santa pay by changing the tax laws to exempt your income from taxes, transfer the tax burden to those second class citizens mentioned above, and see to it that the wages of ?those people? are driven down until, in desperate straits, they join your military and go off to fight the wars you?ve concocted. You know, Rich Man?s War, Poor Man?s Fight. What a perfect, effective piece of circular reasoning. Now we understand the Republican philosophy of government being implemented by George W. Bush.
There?s one more point, not sequential but related: as a child I was really puzzled by this Santa Claus thing: ?he sees you when you?re sleeping, he knows when you?re awake; he knows if you?ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness? sake!? To me that sounded like a description of, if not God, then at least Jesus. But why did they dress Jesus in that big red suit and give him a silly beard? It didn?t make sense to me, and I early on concluded it was all fake, another adult scam to make us kids behave. If that was fake, you couldn?t trust these adults in anything, and the whole thing was a lie, including, by the way, God and Jesus. So much for all that.
Rescue the people? Well, does the new bankruptcy law answer your question? We now have a new Fed Chair who once actually said he would print dollars and throw them out of an airplane to bring the dollar down (and provide excess liquidity to jack up a stumbling economy). Do you feel that a perfect financial hurricane just might be coming? Somehow, someday, someway we will have to pay the piper.
And, Josh, I hate to have erected another straw man for the self-righteous right to knock down. But what can I say when our worthy President himself told us to fight terrorism by going shopping? Greed is good, Mr. Fox News!
applejackking@hotmail.com
Great article Teddy!
On the War, on the Bankrupcy bill, and especially on CAFTA, Moran's position just adds up to death for Democrats.
David Sirota has a great piecehere on how another Democrat, Greg Meeks from NY, is having his head handed to him for selling out the party for CAFTA.
I'd love to see a real strong Progressive stand up to take Moran down next election cycle.
That being said, I'm not about to support any candidate who's going to back off of Moran's pro-privacy, pro-education positions.
Moran's a DLC boy, he's not perfect, but until we get a really good guy up there, all we can do is yell at him, show him the power of the Progressive movement in Virgina and try to make him come around.
Moran is no more pro-education than he is anti-war. "We support our troops. We need to finish this mission!" that two-mansion-dwelling tool of Tom Davis told House members on 5/5/05.
Well I support our students, not Moran's teach-to-test No Child Left Behind bill.
We need to finish this mission of strengthening the Democratic Party by retiring Moran.
The United Steelworkers along with the UAW and others walked out on Moran during the State AFL-CIO convention last week. Keeping Moran in office is tearing the Democratic Party in the 8th apart. When you've lost the union members, and the I-66 neighbors, and the progressives, and the Jews, what are you left with?
Even if it were possible for Moran to survive politically past November 2006, why would you want him to?
Don't do it, Josh. Don't tear the Democratic party apart just to keep that old goat around a few years longer. Ask Jim Moran to retire in 2006.
But what about Democratic weasels who are so controversial that they harm the Democratic party and weaken the antiwar movement?
Is it worth harming the Democratic party and keeping it in a minority status just to protect the seats of incumbent Democratic weasels like Jim Moran?
Jim Moran is a member of the House Out of Iraq Caucus.
Moran gave a rousing antiwar speech at a Kaine rally in Arlington a few weeks ago. Moran called the Iraq War "unjustifiable."
Yet weasel Moran says that he wants troops to complete the mission of the allegedly "unjustifiable" war. Jim Moran stated on the floor of the House on 5/5/05 that "We support our troops. We have to complete this mission!"
Are the people who attended this antiwar rally in favor of fighting to complete this mission, whatever the mission is?
If not, they might wish to call Moran's office at (202) 225-4376 and ask Rep. Weasel to explain his contradictory positions on the Iraq War.
If Kilgore gets four weasels, Weasel Moran gets at least five. Kilgore's weaseling cannot affect life and death issues like the war in Iraq, But Weasel Moran's does.
Kilgore's irresponsible, Kaine is able.
Kilgore's always afraid to have anyone hear him talk. Always has been, always will be.
Kaine's just a good guy to talk to.
How's that? too long?
When he came in to office he and Mark Warner turned a $6bn deficit into a $2bn surplus by making government more efficient and was able to simultaneously cut taxes for 65% of Virginians.
This is a man of faith with broad experience and a track record of success. Tim Kaine has taken Virginia Forward and he deserves your vote.
Where does Jerry Kilgore get his wacky ideas that good times will last forever and that we can spend spend spend until we go bankrupt?
Good time Jerry! what a deadbeat!