The American Political and Economic Situations Are Bad ─ Even Columnist Thomas Friedman Is No Longer Temperate about Them

© 2010 Peter Free

 

29 September 2010

 

Aggressive stupidity sets me off ─ Today I have equally incensed company from a usually temperate thinker

 

Most of this website is an appeal to a reasoned national direction.  Given my deep seated hostility to today’s moronic politics, some of what I write is incautiously intemperate in tone.

 

However, our situation must really bad because today I have company from someone who is rarely anything but even-keeled.

 

Columnist Thomas L. Friedman ─ writing about the Tea Party’s need to do more than let off steam, if it wants to lead ─ summarized what is wrong with the United States today:

 

[D]ebt and bloated government — are actually symptoms of our real problem, not causes.

They are symptoms of a country in a state of incremental decline and losing its competitive edge, because our politics has become just another form of sports entertainment, our Congress a forum for legalized bribery and our main lawmaking institutions divided by toxic partisanship to the point of paralysis.

 

© 2010 Thomas L. Friedman, The Tea Kettle Movement, New York Times (28 September 2010) (paragraph split for online readability)

 

Calling the banana yellow

 

Friedman’s synopsis of our woeful situation equates to the banana republic syndrome that Americans used to deride just a few decades ago.

 

Bet we didn’t see that change in status coming.

 

The Tea Party’s contradictory positions reflect the public’s not-so-small responsibility for our miserable affairs

 

Mr. Friedman continued:

 

And how can you take seriously a movement that sat largely silent while the Bush administration launched two wars and a new entitlement, Medicare prescription drugs — while cutting taxes — but is now, suddenly, mad as hell about the deficit and won’t take it anymore from President Obama?

Say what? Where were you folks for eight years?

 

© 2010 Thomas L. Friedman, The Tea Kettle Movement, New York Times (28 September 2010) (paragraph split for online readability)

Lack of national insight is the overall problem

It is difficult to be wise and strategically accurate when one ignores history, hypocritically steeps in denial, bathes in arrogance, and eagerly grabs money not one’s own.

Recognizing our addiction to complacence is the first step toward recovery

Only then can we progress through the challenging steps to re-finding America’s greatness.

Or colloquially, “It ain’t all them other guys’ fault.”