Politicians don’t get the economy. Ever. I mean, they might even be economists, but they don’t seem to understand what is significant about the economy. You may wonder what I’m talking about considering the fact that the “economy” has been in the news constantly lately, and it would be very difficult to understand how anyone would miss this type of story. Well, let me explain what’s going on, and perhaps we might start to recognize some very obvious signs that seem to keep getting missed.
First, the average American doesn’t care one iota about the deficit. Oh, they care, but they don’t really care. It’s like when a guy tells his girlfriend he loves her. He’s the politician in this equation. He probably truly loves her. Now, when a woman tells a guy she loves him, she might actually mean she LOVES him, as in she would drag herself across the desert over jagged glass for him, or she loves him, which means she tolerates his presence and thinks he’s kind of okay, but there’s no way in the world he’s ever getting to third base with her. Yeah, when making these analogies, I sometimes use really sophomoric examples that I wouldn’t normally use in every day conversation. I don’t think I’ve referred to women, dating and baseball analogies in the same setting ever before in normal conversations.
Anyway, the point is: while our politicians might understand the economy, they don’t understand what’s important about the economy that matters to the average American. Because when it comes down to it, that’s ALL that is going to make a difference during an election. Think about that for a moment. We keep hearing gloom and doom predictions about the economy, especially if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, don’t stop the deficit from getting out of control and don’t fix the sinking ship (or whatever stupid analogy we use at any particular time). The average American is thinking: Do I have a job right now, and do I expect to have a decent one in the very near future? That’s about it. Whether or not the debt ceiling is reached, whether or not the US ever pays off its debts, or whether or not the US is perceived as still being a global, economic superpower, the average American doesn’t care. All he or she cares about is what matters to him or her at any particular time.
Which means the average person doesn’t feel any ties to the deficit of this country at all. Yes, on a surface level, they know that they are part of the mix of people who have to pay for it all. But we’ve been kicking this can down the road for so long that the average American thinks that his or her grandkids will pay for it, not him or her. We’re talking such big numbers that they’ve completely lost all sense of ability to pertain to individuals. When I’m told that the deficit is approaching $13 trillion, they may as well tell me it’s $13 BAZILLION because a trillion is an amount that my little head is never going to grasp. I’m still having a hard time grasping the thousands that one day I have to pay off for student loans. Trillions is bordering on ludicrous to me. So multiply that by 300 million people (equally ridiculous) and you start to understand why the average person doesn’t care one bit.
In the end, the average American is convinced one of two things will happen: The debt will somehow disappear, or we’ll continue to kick the can down the road for a few more decades and never deal with it in our lifetimes. The other alternative, which is the more obvious one, is that the entire system will collapse, and the US will fall into some sense of anarchy, where people will have to fend for themselves until a bunch of rich people create a new government that they argue is “for the people”. The average person, like average people throughout time, really have no say so in the whole matter and figure that the affairs of state are better left to the people who seem to enrich themselves regardless of the type of government we have. The very concept of the US collapsing is laughable to most every American, for the simple reason that it has never happened before. Sure, we’ve had revolutions (one), and we’ve had civil wars (one), but for the most part, the system has been in place for multiple generations where not a single person alive today living n the United States has ever seen this country as anything other than the government we have today. The very possibility of collapse is unimaginable.
Which means that when it happens, no one will see it coming. And that will make the anarchy that much more like a hell on Earth, kind of like St. Augustine talked about when the Roman Empire finally collapsed. No one saw it coming then, and they danced in the streets while the empire burned. And then they woke up from their drunken spree through anarchy to realize that they had to try to put it all back together again.
They didn’t call it the dark ages for nothing.