My Ugly Christmas Gift To You

                                                                         

Proposition: If you believe that I have written sincerely about love and hope and that I have love in my heart...and that I speak to you without bitterness.

And If you believe that I am someone who has studied the business of living and loving for a meaningful amount of time.

And if you believe that I care enough about you and yours to write this.

And if you believe our country is not getting better, but is rapidly descending into a state of chaos,

And if you believe that, despite your own best efforts to affect positive change, things are getting worse, then do the following:

1) Become a "universalist", become a world traveller, toss aside the notion that America will always be the best place to live and hedge your bets. Explore the world, whether from airplane or from your desk, and seek out a "second home", a second nation that you might immigrate to when all hell breaks loose.

2) Teach your children that same sense of universality...many have done so in recent years, and been better off for doing so. Find that second option of home and soften the confines of your thinking...that your children might find a place to live far better than the crumbling civilization of this once great nation.

Were I raising kids today I'd be sending them off to overseas study programs, traveling with them as much as my budget would allow, and I'd be looking for a quarter acre in some promising place, then shedding material goods so that a future move would as easy as possible.

I would be studying the customs and language and laws for my prospective new home country. I would know as much about it before I moved there as I possibly could. I would learn to be flexible, willing to give up a few things "totally American" and embrace some shiny new customs.

So why am I giving this advice?

Folks, I am as emotional as the next person. I am just as prone to react emotionally to these day to day issues that leave your mouth agape as anyone else.

But I am also a historian by nature and study. I am more capable than most to see the larger societal and governmental trends. And I say without reservation that we Americans are in deep horse shit.

I will not bore you with an unending discussion of the problems that will make you and your children's life unbearable very soon in these United States. But allow me to laundry list a few.

1) The $20 trillion dollar national debt. While that number is almost too large to comprehend, we CAN bring the numbers down to numbers we can. We are currently paying hundreds of billions of dollars in interest on that debt....tax dollars that could have once gone (before this massive debt) to building roads and bridges and state of the art airports and safer air traffic control systems. And we could fund research to cure cancer and fund smart traffic lights and alternative energy solutions. Instead we are servicing our debt. If any of you have ever run up credit card debt, then looked at the interest you are paying for that debt, you might have a small idea of the problem. Except our problem is worse. Our best economists say that, within ten years, we will be spending 24% of all taxes collected, just to service the debt....just paying the interest..not the principle! Heretofore, our government has kept their own interest rates artificially low by pumping "funny money" into the financial system. Sadly, that is a temporary measure that has to stop. It alway has over the hundreds of years of history. Even today, with the Federal Reserve's slight hikes in interest rates, we are paying only 1.5 percent on our government bonds....and still paying hundreds of billions in interest on that massive debt. When (not if) we go back to the historical norm of 6%, you will find that the government cannot pay for all the generous benefits they are now offering via a "national credit card without a spending limit".

Now, given that we cannot continue to pay those many government benefits, what will happen to the 47 percent of America who are currently living off those benefits? While you have few worries about the "Social Security Set" emerging from their wheel chairs and rioting, what do you imagine tens of millions of "free loaders" will do when those benefits (read bribes for votes) can no longer be paid? When low cost student loans can no longer be given out (by the way, our students have now accrued more than $1 trillion dollars in student loans, ready to be defaulted on and create the next loan crisis ala 2008) what will those campus snowflakes do? And if Black urban thugs are rioting now, what will they do when their crack mom's welfare check gets trimmed, or eliminated altogether? What will happen to our national security when we are no longer able to fund the national defense budget? And, with government commanding most of the loan money in this country, how will folks be able to buy a home when annual inflation is rising at 20 percent a year, and home mortgages are 20 percent as well. Think that could never happen? It already has....from 1977 to 1980 when we had a peanut farmer Democrat as President!

Governmentally, what will our government look like when everyone votes for a free spending President and a free spending Congress? Who is going to come along and fund that borrowing? (China, who now owns $2 trillion of our current debt, and Japan and South Korea who own another trillion will not bet on our bonds again!) And, let's face it; politically we are governed by small men. Where giants like Washington and Jefferson and Lincoln once walked the earth, we are governed now by mental midgets, more corrupt as they have ever been....and absolutely cowardly in not passing balanced budgets...just to keep that massive debt at $20 trillion!

What will American society be like when the government can no longer buy "semi-peace" with a government check? In that near future dog eat dog society, expect explosive crime, imploding paychecks and American streets you won't be willing to walk through when the sun goes down.

I'm sorry folks. This is like telling a child there is no Santa Clause. But there really isn't.

So, if you're smart, you'll begin educating your children and grandchildren about relative advantages of living elsewhere. Because, as God is my witness, you sure won't be wanting them to grow up in tomorrow's America.

If there was any hope at all, if the younger generations were showing a tenth of the spunk our grandfathers had, I'd say there's hope. But in an age when they cry for "safe spaces", at a time when one can claim ethnic, financial, or sexual victimhood, and get away with it merely by accusation, I'd say there is little hope for the America that was once a great one.

This is my gift to you. I'm sorry that it is so damned ugly. But someone had to tell you. Start scouring the want ads for places elsewhere....from Australia to New Zealand to Zanzibar....cause America's gonna be a holy mess...and soon.