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Getaclewis

I'm a ghostwriter and book editor - there are a lot of amazing and inspirational stories that deserve and need to be told... so I help shape and polish the writing first!

I'm a mom of two teenagers and the wife of an amazing man and, at heart, a loner who doesn't like to be alone. Some days, I want to jump on the bed and laugh joyously and, other times, I can barely suppress the temptation to crawl under the bed and hide from the world. Bi-polar? Nope... just a girl!...

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United States of Outta Control

Sometimes I feel that, just as there does not seem to be a presidential candidate ideally suited for me, I only have the option to live in The United States of Do For Me or the United States of My Way.

In the USDFM, there is a prevailing mentality that my government should and must take care of my every need. Sure, in the end, I pay through the nose in taxes, and will vote into office time and again those who say raising the amount I must shed from my own fiercely earned paycheck is the way to increase (or heaven help us, at least preserve) my standard of living and decrease the choices I must (or can) make for myself and those I love. But I still convince myself that I want a cost-effective government and I’m a rebel and would join the Boston Tea Party, given the chance. I convince myself I’m free, even as I extend my wrists for the chains.

In the USMW, the reigning majority refuses to see any other side of the coin but their own and cannot fathom that others don’t support rewarding They Who Have Figured Out How To Make Money. After all, the era of trickle-down Reaganomics ushered in a time of unprecedented prosperity (for They Who Figured Out How To Make Money) and They want to continue to rule the land as they sit on their heaps of golden largesse and smile at how well things work out when you play your cards right. And why shouldn’t They? They earned it, right? Everyone had the same chance. Sure, intellect, socioeconomic access to private education and family circumstance factored in. But didn’t even Obama, whose mother was single and on welfare, come from deep disadvantage and overcome even perceived racial discrimination to excel financially and politically? It is possible and the masses should be expected to make the same effort and let the system work as it can at its best. The rest be damned.

In the USDFM, we are told we should trust the same government that routinely spends money like it is bottomless and coming from someone else’s pocket. I mean once you owe several trillion (might as well say gazillion) dollars, does it really matter if the next toilet seat factors in a few extra thousand dollars for its minority producer? Sure, the partisan leader will potentially change hands in each election and the hope is a new king or queen will change the status quo, but the decay is insidious and deep within the inner workings of entitlement, isn’t it? For so long, the government, regardless of political party in charge, has felt entitled to spend as it pleased, to engage consultants and entertain special interest groups and explore better ways while spending bigger dollars and rewarding their own crony meal tickets that they are locked in a maze with no apparent exit. Somehow they are also going to tackle the enormity of a renovated healthcare system, available to all, and despite the reality that nothing in government has been efficient or cost effective, this will be different and children and old folks will no longer have snotty noses or die without humane access to skyrocketing treatment. And instead of higher healthcare expenses, we will somehow be able to afford higher taxes.

In the USMW, taxes are cut and so are programs that help children who will grow up eventually to be poorly prepared to sort through the mess they have been left. No matter. Folks should learn to do for themselves. The private sector will find its own perfect balance. So will kids and seniors. As for healthcare, everyone (who can afford it) should have their own doctor and a chicken in every pot and a big stick to carry and… wait… gee it all gets so muddled. Well, we really need to resolve this Medicare mess but that just might mean fewer benefits for the kids who cough in the night and burn feverishly while their deadbeat parents look helplessly on. I’m sure it will all work out for them somehow. To show how big we are, we will even extend five thousand big ones to offset those medical bills. (If you’ve been to a specialist lately for anything more serious than a sniffle, you know how far that will take you.)

USDFM says bring our troops home. Yes, we will help where we can in the world, but only when the stars align and we can clearly see public sentiment rallying to save the children being raped in the streets. We chased a madman and lost and need to save face and regroup and pick another conquerable region on another day. Return our soldiers to their families and let them begin to figure out how to resume their lives in a world with no jobs before they have no lives to offer.

USMW says we may have gotten ourselves into this mess to make a dramatic statement after our national tragedy and, yes, we expected our popularity ratings to soar and economy to surge (thereby causing our ratings to soar even higher), but this is no time to leave. There are other world powers interested in filling the gaps we vacate and we’d rather they not align with the enemy, thank you very much. So we’ll just have to stay and continue to tackle something that has tangled beyond recovery and we’ll offer genuine condolences at the soldiers lost and writhing family pain.

Sigh.

Need I go on? There is no perfect world and no perfect candidate and no perfect party and no perfect solutions. (Well, there is the Fair Tax movement (www.fairtax.org), but no one wants to seriously weigh that, because it would require... gasp!... change! Funny how embracing that word can be so fickle. And, yes, any change requires evolution and is inherently imperfect. It allegedly took time for man to drop gills, too.)

Sometimes I believe we would be best served if we could revert to the old problems, where a victory garden and a strong military and smaller government and honest manual labor jobs and steady work ethic kept things simple. But that was a mirage, too, wasn’t it? Families still went hungry and soldiers were murdered or came home scarred inside and out, but didn’t talk about it – they just drank a lot and beat their families behind closed doors or watched grimly as others did the same. Doctors charged less, but people died more and jobs faded away and people left their farms and filed to the cities and crime and welfare prospered and …

…well, and here we are.

The world is a mess. What we need is a perfect candidate.

Anyone in the mood to pray?

No? Well, go ahead and vote. (I’m not kidding. Everyone needs to vote.) Just please don’t expect that to solve everything.

Without God (and the life changes that would inspire and the wisdom and genuine collaboration, inside politics and beyond, that would follow), we’ll be lucky if it solves anything.