The figures are startling. U.S.
national debt exceeds $39 trillion and
rising. Total U.S. household debt is roughly
$19 trillion. That figure includes $13.2
trillion in mortgage debt, $1.67 trillion in
auto loan debt, $1.66 trillion in student
loan debt, and $1.3 trillion in credit card
debt. Personal bankruptcy, unsurprisingly,
is rising, fueled by inflated prices,
overspending, loss of jobs, and medical
debt, which remains the leading cause of
personal bankruptcy. (National medical debt
is only $220
billion, but when you pile medical bills on
top of all the other bills Americans face,
an accident or illness is often all it takes
to bankrupt a family.)
The U.S.
government’s solution is
to wage wars while giving $500 billion
more to the Pentagon and military
contractors in FY2027. The Iran War costs
more than $2 billion a day, and no one in
Congress ever asks, how are you going to
pay for that? The U.S. military gets all
the money it wants and more. So too does
Israel. The American people, however, get
no help. What gives?
What we
get are circuses without bread or, more
accurately, circuses while being pressured
for our bread. Watching football or
baseball on TV, I get bombarded by ads to
bet on the games. I can’t enjoy the circus
without someone coercing me to give up my
bread. And then there’s always a
commercial offering me help if I should
become addicted to gambling. How American
is that?
The
billionaire owners of major sports teams
love this. Bet money you may not have on
whether Aaron Judge will hit a home run or
Patrick Mahomes will throw a touchdown on
the next play. It’s all legal so it’s all
good.
Meanwhile,
state
lottery tickets are sold with odds that
would make a Mafia gangster blush. I
remember when a state lottery ticket that
cost $10 made me gasp. Now you can buy
lottery tickets in my state that cost $50
each. A scratch ticket that costs $50!
Obviously, such tickets are a regressive
tax on the working and middle classes. Put
differently, I don’t see rich people
lining up to buy them.
We are a
nation of debtors with a serious gambling
problem. America, the unsinkable titanic
superpower, has struck the iceberg and the
debt keeps pouring in. The pumps can’t
keep up even as the captain keeps telling
us he’ll right the ship by taking on even
more water. The democrats tell us the
solution is simple—just replace the
captain.
No one in
the government, it seems, wants to live
within their means. As Americans tighten
their belts, the empire is fed even more
money as an “investment” in more weapons
and more wars.
Think
about that previous sentence. Next year,
“our” government wants to invest $1.5
trillion
in the U.S. military, including over time
roughly $2 trillion (or more) for nuclear
weapons and a Golden Dome missile defense
system. Forget about help with medical
bills, child care, education, or most
anything else. What your government
wants
from you is for you to keep spending, keep
consuming, keep gambling, keep waving the
flag, and otherwise keep your mouth shut.
But it’ll be
too late to protest when the ship is lost
and icy water enters our lungs. Best we
shout our opposition to this madness while
we still can. Best we demand change and
work for it. Best we gamble in ourselves
and our ability to discern what is right
and what is wrong. Because we know much of
what is happening now in America is dead
wrong.
