It doesn't show how soft we've become. Nowhere in its reflection can you see our collective obesity or self-indulgence. It reveals no greed, no shortsightedness.
Stand before it and you see power. You see ingenuity and industriousness. You see generosity.
You also see the image of one who is deserving. Entitled. Not to mention aggrieved. Put-upon.
We are hopelessly in hock, yet while our economy tanked the richest of the rich got grotesquely richer. They still have their hands out. What they have is not enough. It's never enough. Most of us are OK with that, regardless of our political leanings. Put it on the credit card. Send the bill to the kids and grandkids.
If we feel the least bit unsafe, a war is started on our behalf. No longer are we asked to pay for it. No scrap drives or rubber drives. No rationing. No war tax. Put it on the credit card. Bill the kids and grandkids.
America's politicians, whores that they are to the less than 1% of society who paid to put them in their stations, feign concern over the exploding national debt while driving us down an expressway to bankruptcy. Most of us are OK with that, regardless of our political leanings.
Cut our taxes. Keep your hands off our Social Security and Medicare. Spare no expense in fighting the terrorists. We're entitled. Put it on our tab.
OK, things are falling apart. Blame some foreigner. Some immigrant. Someone browner. Someone lesser.
That's some mirror.
3 comments:
Both on a personal level and a governmental level. Personal debt and credit card abuse is just as bad on a individual level as it is on a governmental level. Did you see the Frontline program on PBS this week? People who lost their jobs still spending large and putting it on the credit card. Will people ever learn? We need to pay for needs (education, infrastructure, health) and not for wants.
"Our Magic Mirror" is a nice little piece of writing with which to decorate the dreadful first decade of the new millennium, and beckon us on to our future without a history.
Well said.
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