Coastal Post Online
MARIN COUNTY'S NEWS MONTHLY - FREE PRESS
(415)868-1600 -
(415)868-0502(fax) - P.O.
Box 31, Bolinas, CA, 94924
October, 2004
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The Sad Truth About Our Future With
Bush
By Jeanette Pontqcq
There is a very
old Chinese curse that seems applicable as we approach the November election:
"May you live in interesting times!" Please note that it is a curse,
not a heartfelt hope for a pleasant future. Watching the political and economic
realities recently has confirmed to me that we are indeed living in very
interesting times.
History books and press releases are written by the winners. Only much later
do historians dig into the dirt to find out what really happened and why. As
Howard Zinn has proven, history can be much more poignant and real if the daily
lives of common people living through those "interesting times" are
expressed in written accounts instead of just "the great men.". In
other words, what happens to YOU and your family due to the political acts by
those in power is more interesting and telling than watching how George Bush
and his Base fares.
So it is intriguing to speculate how future historians will deal with the decades
from 1990 to 2010. With our present mind set, one would think that 9/11 and the
Iraq wars would take center page. After
all, 9/11 was a traumatic shock to the American system, so provincial and
unused to world realities as it is. The Iraq
wars, along with their bloody aftermath and non-efficacy in combating terrorism
will have to stand the test of time and future analysis. Meanwhile, quite a few
young Americans in the Armed Services will die or be seriously wounded for
life, as will many more Iraqis (and unknown others). Knowing the truth of why
that happened ten or twenty years later will not bring them back, heal their
families or lessen the hatred of the US.
Their deaths are simply a price that the "great men" are willing to
pay for "great men's" ambitions from a safe distance.
I HAVE TO DISAGREE that 9/11 and the Iraq
wars will take center page in future histories, although they will be serious
contenders for the so-called honor, as will the deterioration of our
Constitutional protections and the degradation of our environment. I PREDICT
here, however, that the future will look back on the two decades that would end
with Bush's second term as the staging area for the melt down of the world
economies, including the United
States.
An economic Perfect Storm will materialize if, as expected, Bush is
re-elected in 2004. But then it will be too late to avoid the aftermaths. As
David Lazarus (Chronicle business analyst) states so clearly, "over the
next ten years, the nation's cumulative budget deficit will soar to $2.3
trillion as projected by the non-partisan CBO. And if Bush succeeds in making
his tax cuts for the rich permanent, as he's vowed to do if re-elected, the
10-year deficit could top $4 trillion."
At the same time that particular economic nuclear bomb is being quietly
laid, the Baby Boomers (of which I am one) will be retiring in vast numbers,
placing an unprecedented strain on already-depleted federal coffers. The very
ugly result is that "the nation simply won't be able to pay the level of
benefits that have been promised," a quote from Brian Riedl, a budget
analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington. He was referring to Social
Security and Medicare. Mr. Riedl probably smiled when he said that, since
conservatives have been trying to kill Social Security from the day it was
enacted.
Who gets hurt the most, dear reader, is YOU and me. With the unprecedented
and persistent level of personal debt held by Americans of all stripes just to
get by, imagine what it will look like when those debts are called in.
Consumption (i.e. consuming) will plummet. There will, by that time,
potentially be twice as many people without health insurance....and those with
such insurance will be paying huge amounts to keep it. Job creation? To do
what? Sound harsh? Harsher still is the economic fantasy land so many Americans
are clinging to as they stock up at the big box stores.
Instead of designing lasting reforms of the monetary system and putting
money under the national mattress for the hard times economists see on the
horizon, the Bushies have been, and will accelerate, giving away the national
cash as fast as possible. Along with more and more tax cuts to the richest
citizens and corporations, the Bushies have a goal of starving out Social
Security as we know it. The irony is that the very voters who will be most hurt
by what the Bushies have planned, will vote for them in droves.
Further irony is that the huge, unwieldy monies being laid out by our
government on trying to keep Iraq afloat,
and our soldiers out of body bags over the next five years, will contribute to
forcing our economy into default. So while Joe and Jane SixPack shout hurrah to
have George Bush for another four years, they are also shouting for their own
financial demise. It is always the blue collar wage earners that are hurt first
and deepest.
What can I say? This is a story told again and again over the last thousands
of years. Governments become corrupt and "the people" get stupid and
simplistic and shout "hurrah" for the very rich guys who are screwing
them. Old story, new faces. So tend your gardens and try to be nice to each
other. In West Marin, it's not the end of the world if Bush wins. We live in
relative isolation from the real America and will be able to tsk-tsk from a distance -at least for a time. We
can meditate on the fact that our brand of The Left has become politically
expendable and extraneous, and that we helped make it so. I hope I am wrong.