Patriotism Is Not A Slogan On A Magnetic Ribbon

by Brian Burns

It’s difficult to stimulate our nation’s economy when most of what our leaders collect from our earnings is immediately sent to foreign nations. One might think that investing in our nation, the $700 billion that the Bush Administration has spent so far in the Middle East, could have had a positive effect on our rotting job market, our failing health care, and our overly packed public schools. Maybe it would help to reinvest some of the war-money in private sector incentives to remedy our headache over energy costs, and our insatiable desire for alternative fuels. One would hope that eight years in office would buy the time needed to enact any pro-American policy, but domestic policy was seemingly another one of those things George W. Bush forgot back at the ranch.

It has been eight years of arguably the worst policy making in the history of our country, and the American ignorance towards that fact is astounding. Even though the majority of Americans have accepted that Bush’s presidential run was as close to an utter failure as anyone could imagine, the desire to rid ourselves of an administration whose partisan politics, corporatist policies, and self-serving ideals was seemingly short lived. Now, with presidential hopeful John McCain gaining enough support to where he is running a close race against a man whose campaign slogan includes the word “change”, it’s apparent that a great number of Americans would choose to forego changing our country’s policies for the better, and simply find happiness in knowing the name Bush is no longer carrying the tag ‘Commander in Chief’.

With regard to America’s economic situation, it seems that we’re stuck floating slowly downward like a feather in an abyss. Last Tuesday, the Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, gave us the forecast in which we were told we would be continuing our descent right around the time our president announced that our economy is stable. This is important to note because John McCain agrees with the president’s assessment, and his campaign co-chairman went so far as to call Americans a “nation of whiners” who were stuck in a “mental recession”. They listen to Wall Street, and their economic advisors who believe that our degenerating housing market has already hit the bottom, and say that it will undoubtedly take a u-turn. They use the logic behind economics that shows how bad can actually be good. They say that our plummet to the housing market floor will bring out those who want to buy homes at rock-bottom prices. Consequently, the housing market will reverse itself and will once again grow strong. Their logic only works when employment opportunities are strong, however, since it takes a steady income to maintain the cost of owning a home. But with our job market being dragged down by our failing economy, and the misguided trust in free-trade policies, it seems our economists are either reporting their aspirations, or have lost the ability to think beyond step 1 in the process of coming to a realistic conclusion when thinking through a problem. Though both are things we should be used to after listening to the predictions from the Republicans over the past eight years.

We were told that our troops would be celebrated as liberators, and that they would be greeted with roses in Baghdad, while we were pointing out step 2 in the process of thinking that showed what happened to Russia when they tried occupying a Middle East nation. We were told Bush’s tax cuts would stimulate the economy, while we again pointed to step 2 which clearly shows that his Republican predecessors, both Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., helped drive our economy further into recessions with tax cuts. We were told NAFTA and CAFTA are beneficial for Americans, but once again, that pesky step 2 is showing that the federal government has regulations enacted that make it more expensive for foreign companies to operate here than in nations where they can setup shop without providing healthcare benefits, a safe work environment, and where they can pay the worker a pittance in comparison. Therefore, their prediction that there would be as much insourcing as there is outsourcing seems to be one dream through which John McCain seems to still be sleeping.

The problem Americans now face is who to choose to hasten the upswing. Barack Obama chants, “Change,” while John McCain claims he’s the “Best to lead since day one.” And though it appears McCain wants to continue upon the same trail from which Bush is preparing to flee, his supporters are coming out of the Kudzu in droves. The citizens are feeling the pressure from the cost of living, and are aware that it’s one of the few things on the rise. They’ve lost sight of our children’s education as it fell from their view of the price at the gas pump. They’ve forgotten about our troops in the Middle East because they can’t take their eyes off the price stamped on a milk jug. John McCain is fully aware of this and so he is doing what most Republicans do during their presidential campaigns - they avoid talking about their policy and scare the American public by threatening that their opponent in the donkey costume will raise their taxes. Judging by the numbers of supporters McCain has managed to recruit, the scare tactic apparently works well. 

John McCain’s plan on spending trillions of dollars in an attempt at occupying Iraq, for what he said could be a hundred years, is a wad of spit in the eyes of Americans who want the war to end and for our troops to return home safely. It’s an upturned middle finger aimed at the faces of us who want to reinvest our earnings into bettering our own country, and who can read where step 2 tells that the best method of securing our nation is not by trying to eliminate everyone who opposes our views. And like his predecessor, McCain has no plan on how to go about occupying Iraq. He avoids telling us that the money could only come from raising taxes, or by borrowing from foreign nations like the $150 billion loan Bush took from China. While we lose jobs, and watch the economy break beneath our feet, they spend our money building walls in Baghdad in their efforts to keep the local Muslim factions separated from each other. We’re led to believe that we’re giving them freedom, but creating tiny enclaves and setting up Baghdad to look like Algernon’s maze is hardly the blueprint for a free land.

It’s apparent the Republicans are back to their old selves - those who refuse to think their way through to step 2. If they read further to where it says that ending the war in Iraq would help our economy a great deal, even if it means the corporations backing the war having to lose out on hundreds of millions in annual profit, they might see that John McCain’s ‘tax and spend on foreign nations’ policy has no way of helping to regrow our economy. If they were to find a true sense of patriotism, unlike those they hang from flagpoles or stick to their bumpers, they might find that it’s best to vote for the candidate who is not wearing the elephant costume, but for the donkey-guy who at least wants to end the war and reinvest that money and our tax dollars into our own nation.