American Consequences - April 2019

swimming pool and Bentley too. Under the condition of politics, you can drown me in your swimming pool and run me over with your Bentley. In politics, only one side can win. Which is bad. But what’s worse is this means there have to be sides... Faction – angry partisan faction – isn’t just a byproduct of politics, it is politics. Politics cannot exist without faction. Politics cannot exist without people fighting each other. Put down the free market goods and services pie... Pick up the pie knife of politics. Freedom and free markets bring us all together in the marketplace... Politics carves us up. Politics pits us against each other. Politics turns us into warring tribes. Politics hands us the spear of outrage at the slightest perceived slight to our primitive clan, smears us with the war paint of identity politics, gives us the shield of political correctness, and tells us that we’re not naked savages squatting around a smoldering fire of resentment and envy, but that we’re Noble Social Justice Warriors. Politics pits one ethnic group against another. And it does it for free. It doesn’t even charge us the way 23andMe or Ancestory.com do. Politics pits men against women – as if we didn’t have the institution of marriage doing a fine job of that already. Politics pits immigrants against... against whom ? We’re all immigrants in this country. Even Native Americans came across the land

bridge from Siberia saying, “See you later, freezing Siberians with your itchy wooly mammoth long underwear and mastodon meat on your breath. We’re off to the beautiful Pacific Northwest – beachfront property, split-level wigwams, and salmon frying on the backyard barbeque grill!” Finally – and most dangerously – politics pits one generation of Americans against another. The millennials are mad at the Baby Boomers for soaking up all the Social Security and Medicare gravy while, at the same time, refusing to retire, leaving the millennials to work in a “gig economy” where they make a living by driving each other around for Uber. There are now more millennial voters than there are Baby Boomers. And they’ve got Uber to take them to the polls while the rest of us are still trying to figure out how that app works. The kids love Bernie Sanders. Not because of his youthful good looks, but because Bernie and his Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ilk have convinced the kids that they can’t get more unless they use an expanded political system to take more away from... everybody reading this. According to a poll conducted by BuzzFeed, almost half of millennial-age Democrats identify themselves as “democratic socialists.” And according to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 60% of all Democrats have a favorable opinion of socialism. But can’t these voters see how a vastly expanded political system has enormous unsustainable costs?

American Consequences

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