The View From the Street

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The problem with our politicians is that they are politicians. You might be wondering why I’d say that, but the answer is simple, and can be found in the history of the United States.

 
Our first President was General George Washington, as everyone should know from history. The first President was a great soldier and statesman. Almost no American will dispute that, but what so many may or may not know, is that he was also a farmer. He worked the land and sweated for a living.
After his term of office was complete, General Washington wanted only to go back to his farm and resume his life. This pattern was repeated by many of our founding fathers. They went to do their duty for the new nation, then, when the job was done, they went home…where ever home was.
Things aren’t that way now. Now we have professional politicians, usually lawyers, who have never worked a real job a single day in their lives. They get elected to office claiming that they are more qualified because of their education and their expertise with the law. But does that make them more…or less, qualified? In my view, if makes them less.
The reason that they are less qualified today, even with all the education, is because there is something maturing about sweating in a field, or behind the wheel of a truck, or digging a ditch, or in a taxi. When you work for a living, you have to depend on the money you’ve sweated for, to provide your food and shelter. You can’t just write a check and pay what you need to pay if you haven’t put money in the bank. The people that end up in DC now have never worked, never sweated, never gone hungry, and never worried about the basics. They grew up with trust funds, and all the cash they needed.
The values that people get from honest labor cannot be overlooked. You see things from the street view. You know how much that extra tax is going to hurt you, or your family. To pay for that extra tax, you’ll have to do without something. And if that tax is on your employer, you might want to start looking for another job pretty soon.
The governmental system we have was never designed for lawyers to run it.  It was never designed for people to make a career out of that sacred office. Yet here we are, watching our country be pounded into oblivion by people that, while they may be sincere, have no idea what the results of their sometimes faddish ideas will be on the working man or woman. They come up with ideas that may seem great in their heads, or on paper, but when tried in reality, make the lives of millions almost unbearable. They have theories that are simply not feasible.
It may sound great to them that they can simply pass a law, or series of laws, and “poof” everyone has health care. But when the law is already passed, and health care prices spike instead of going down, and the people who were not covered, as well as the ones who were, suddenly all have health insurance that covers nothing, or virtually so, the people suffer.
So what is the outcome?
The outcome is exactly what was really intended by the DC elite in the first place. More control in their hands, less in ours. They honestly believe that the masses of people in this country need to be babysat. The huddled masses are not, they think, able to handle these complicated issues. They can barely get to the restroom alone.
They think that they need to take all the power they can to protect us. To rule us. To protect us from the rights that they see as dangerous…like the right to say what we want, or to keep and bear arms, or to decide how many children we need, or even to decide whether or not to live or die.
Please, do not be fooled. These people are not really well intentioned. They care nothing for our health, or even if we have a job. They call themselves “Progressives”, but in my day, we had other words for them, or people like them. Words like “Socialist, Communist, liar, or thief.”
Not that I would actually say that, even in print. It’s not politically correct, after all.