By Wes Pedersen
How long before the real Armageddon?
Put down August 2 as the definitive date.
That is when things begin to fall apart for Americans who have been sleepwalking through the debate in Washington that is going to produce brutal cuts in their livelihoods and the programs that have sustained so many of them in times of need.
It doesn’t matter why the cuts are made. We all know we’ve been in deep water financially as a country ever since George Bush and Barack Obama got their hands in the country’s till boxes, spending money on wars that history has made impossible for us to win and walk away from knowing that peace has been assured.
It doesn’t matter that a large share of members of Congress, and President Obama himself, like George W. Bush, are millionaires – fat cats telling us common folk that we’ve got to hurt so the country can recover from their military insanities that have dictated that we stay at war for decades.
None of that matters because, unless we rage against the system as never before, that’s the way it is going to be. We should have been in the trenches, fighting the fat cats in office in Washington and in business whose indifference to the common folk is sickening.
The point here is whatever decisions are made on or before August 2, they are going to be hurtful beyond comprehension.
Our President and Congress, who should have been massively concerned with the fate of the common citizen, knew all this. They knew, and the country knew, that the deficit was a problem that should have been handled years ago. Our representatives, and we Americans, paid no heed until the game was almost over.
Why? Because everyone – everyone – expected that Congress and the White House would do the sensible thing: raise the debt ceiling again so America could get on with business and survive until a real solution emerged somehow, some time. (See my April 6 column.)
Instead, with an election coming up next year, the political animals in the zoo that is Washington decided to make an issue of the deficit. The Republicans took the nation to the brink with their demands that Big Business be treated as the holiest of the sacred cows. The wealthy were assured that no matter who else got scalped, they would be safe.
The president posed as the great defender of the People, all the while prepared to see programs for the needy and the little guy suffer.
The public’s apathy was a co-conspirator in this shady, unfair game. Until now, at least, there have been no mass protests against the inequity of it all. That may come, and it should. Every member of Congress ought to find his or her home office besieged with doorstep demands that the ceiling be lifted.
Capitol Hill should teem with men and women who are mad as hell and at last are doing something about it. Demonstrations for common sense approaches should do on around the clock.
The media should be bristling with citizen anger as never before, not just about the painful cuts that could be made in Social Security, Medicare, education, and the states’ survival, but in protest against the insistence by the White House and congressional members that funds continue to be poured into wars that should have been settled years ago and an exploration of outer space that ought be totally curtailed until the country once against has its finances in order.
Perhaps sanity will be step in somehow in the days before we run out of money on August 2. If it does not, we most certainly will see the after-effects of our leaders’ incompetence and the public’s indifference reflected in panic and riots in our cities’ streets.
Stand up, America. Shout out, America. Flood the sewer that is Capitol Hill with protests. Loud, angry protests. Tell our president and our sluggards in Congress to get real or get lost.
Do it now. Do not wait for the elections to show your anger and your disappointment with those who are supposed to lead America not astray, but down the path to survival but to a revival of spirits, politics and the economy.
Do it now. There is no more time for delays.
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Wes Pedersen is a retired Foreign Service Officer and principal at Wes Pedersen Communications and Public Relations Washington, D.C.
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