"We can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality"
- Ayn Rand
One of my favorite quotes, perhaps because it's pithy and so wonderfully applicable across such a wide swath of issues. These days it seems most applicable to all things 'government.' I have several posts in draft-form that I hope to complete soon and I know I'll be referring to Rand's statement-of-the-obvious throughout them...not explicitly, perhaps, but certainly as a foundational theme.
The news is just chock-full of absurdities that reveal to the point of dismay the willful and wholesale evasion of reality in the absurd theater that passes for policymaking in Washington. I say 'willful' because the folks at the top of the political pile are not stupid. They know the ugly reality of our situation. They have unfettered access to all the information produced by our system and the wealth of lessons handed down from history. But in every instance, it seems, they choose to evade reality as they make promises that cannot be kept (and everyone knows it), set idealized objectives that cannot be attained (and everyone knows it), and swathe their agendas in the noblest-sounding rhetoric when most people have the sense to know they're being sold a bill of goods. They play 'we the people' for fools. But you know the really sad part? Too large of portion of 'we the people' play the game too. Knowing full well the consequences of evading reality, they not only buy the bill of goods, they buy it on credit!
This latest wrangling over sequestration, increasing revenue ('higher taxes' in plain-speak), and cuts to spending (which actually means decreasing only slightly the amount we are still over-spending) reminds me of the old story about two fleas fighting over who owns the dog; an irrelevant argument since neither flea has the slightest ability to exercise the control he arrogantly thinks he has. Just consider: the two parties can't reach agreement on reducing spending by $1 trillion over ten years, meaning, in reality, a 'measly' $100 billion less spending per year -- somewhat irrelevant when we are increasing our debt by over a trillion dollars every year!
All of which reminds me of another wonderfully apropos quote...
"And what would you do with a brain if you had one?"
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