February 8, 2008: The oft-repeated verses from the Lewis Carroll poem 'The Walrus and the Carpenter' have been used to explain much political thinking, and, not to belabor the point, let us once again examine the following verse in the light of today's activities on our national scene, thusly:
'The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things:
of shoes...of ships...of sealing wax...
cabbages...kings,
And why the sea is boiling hot,
and whether pigs have wings'
A timely verse? I think so.
The Walrus (Obama) has talked of many things - all put together by his Democratic cohorts in the House of Representatives, and which are, at this writing, being worked on by those in the Senate. This "prevent a crisis" bill which is supposed to create jobs and begin the curing of all our economic woes has contained much aside from the important items such as 'shoes, ships, and sealing wax' - things representing industry production which this country has been sorely lacking for a number of decades since we began our conversion into a technological society, away from a manufacturing one.
The question as to 'why the sea is boiling hot' is an easy one to answer. Even though the majority of voters hired Obama to lead the country, that does not mean that whatever he requests will be acccepted without reservation, After all, he was not hired as "dictator" although one might be expected to think so, following his remark that after all ..."we won the election"... . So much for bi-partisanship!.
The electorate is not at all happy with this so-called stimulus bill - and one of the consequences of Obama's election is that it may have created more intelligent thinking by our citizens in the wake of the very high bar he set for himself. So the 'boiling sea' is that of the discontent shown in these few days of the Obama administration - a discontent not only among Conservatives, but from those in the middle, and much discontent from the liberal left who expected Nirvana to descend upon them like, as the Spanish poet Lorca described, the dark sky falling upon the night like an anvil.
So, the chance of the so-called stimulus bill passing in its current outrageous form, or, if in the worse case scenario, that does happen, the chances of it creating jobs and improving the economy in a meaningful and long-term way, answers the question of whether pigs have wings - they don't, but if they did, they still won't fly.
As I see it, the only way we can get the country back onto the strong ecomonic trail - to create jobs and a strong GDP, is to get back into manufacturing. I know it sounds anachronistic, but if we are able to create more labor intensive private sector employment which will take away from our need to increase reliance on foreign manufacturing, we would be in a much stronger position. Look, a similar concept is the "drill here, drill now, pay less" concept promoted by American Solutions/Newt Gingrich. Once we begin producing oil for our manufacturing, heating, and transportation use, the less control foreign governments will have over what we do.
Yeah, I know we live in a post-Amercan world, but that does not mean we have to shrivel and become subservient to the growing world powers of China, India, and possibly South America. We should do whatever is necessary to rebuild our economic strength - and that means re-establishing and re-strengthening our private sector economy.
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