The writings of a self-proclaimed modern day patriot…

Curing Apathy With Pain

If you look around in the media, you’ll see news about celebrities, sex drugs rock & roll, the latest sport team, some sort of drama that is about as meaningful as a single grain of sand in the Sahara. It seems that there is a large portion of the population who pays little attention to the state of the world. Some of them seem to force the rose colored glasses on themselves so they can feel better about life. Regardless if the price of gold has about tripled since 2004 and the national deficit has doubled since 2003 simultaneously unemployment has doubled since 2007.

Oh my goodness! Did you hear Tiger Woods is cheating on his wife!? Did you see Avatar!? I really like Johnny Depp! Check out my new iPhone!

We are in historic times for some pretty terrible reasons and it seems some people are intoxicated on pop culture society. We’re breaking records for bad things in America and the Oscars are the focus of our attention.

Honestly, when is the last time you saw a body count of our dead soldiers since the conflicts started in the middle east? Do you have any idea the thousands of American families who are torn apart from their loss? What about the estimates that show that over a million civilians are injured in Iraq? You may never face these people are your peers or neighbors but if you have a soul you have to know they’re as much human as you are. And when you did hear a tremendously high number pinned to blood, death, and pain, how much did you feel the pain?

I was watching an interview today where a talk show host asked a former congressman how to fix the corruption in Washington D.C. The answer wasn’t too surprising to me but it went something like this: “I have no idea!” A congressman spending six years eyeball deep in the politics that control the people (as well as condemn them to future debts, war, etc.) says the corruption is destroying the federal government and he has no idea how to fix it. Think about this… Is there truly a fix? All of our history books says empires always fall. No matter how great they were or how gracefully they fall, they always fall. With that in mind, guess what folks? We have a military base in more than 130 countries in the world and we’re worse than broke. Where on the timeline of an empire are we? Our people are glued to frivolous pop culture as our so-called leaders are looting our lives away at record breaking pace. If you were objectively estimating the future of the world, where would America be in 20 years?

America is getting worse yet apathy is growing. Where do these two intersect? Are we on a non-stop train pushing a cure for apathy with a prescription for pain? Do we really need the country to descend into darker and darker times before we even acknowledge a problem and fight for a fix? Is there any other way than wait for the pain to get so bad the it effects the masses enough to break their attention away from American Idol?

That being said, it is strange that so much can be going wrong with America yet the American machine keeps pushing through it. It just keeps going like an NFL running back with defenders riding his back. Just keep in mind that eventually the strongest running backs fall. We’ve got all of history’s lessons to prove that.

At Some Point, It Will Matter

When most people hear about the national deficit or the national debt they say “Oh yeah that’s terrible! Those politicians can’t stop spending and borrowing money.” What most fail to realize, is that it is our money that is being taxed and inflated just as it is our debt being chained to our wrists and ankles. What’s even worse is that most people see the numbers and think how bad they are, then move on to the next thought. Let’s stop for a second to think about the effect of the numbers for a second.

First, will the debt be paid back? If so, we will all either be taxed directly or taxed with inflation to pay the debt off. Both of which will be crushing our already weak economy. You will see your paycheck shrink and/or payroll taxes increase as the government taxes its way into the black. The economy will suffer tremendously as our tab gets called. If we think unemployment is bad now, we will be amazed how terrible it is at over twenty-five percent.

Now onto the specifics… Let’s say we pay it back by direct taxation (without inflating our currency). That means that the taxpayers will be paying back more than $14 trillion dollars, not including interest. How does that calculate? $113k per taxpayer at this moment. Oh what’s that? You don’t have a spare $113k? Oh well I’m sure the Chinese and Japanese will be fine if we just don’t pay them. The interest on the debt along with the compounding effect of increased taxes on our economy will be detrimental for decades to come.

Or… Let’s say we pay the debt back by printing currency and inflation. Do you have any savings? What about retirement? Do you have any investments? Well their real world value just plummeted. When our “Federal” Reserve decides to print money to pay bills (also known as monetizing debt). Anyone with investments or savings backed by the United States dollar just lost a tremendous amount of their value. This also means many countries around the world will stop using the dollar as their global reserve currency. It would be the perfect timing for them to move into a true currency. This is another step into economic oblivion for the United States. A currency crisis will destroy our country’s economy and create political turmoil more than likely resulting in war. We cannot fathom how terrible a currency crisis would be in our country.

Now let’s think about the people we owe this debt to. We’ve never known either Japan or China to be militaristic in their actions have we? Are we all so brainwashed as to believe that the Arabic countries rich with oil are going to stick to the dollar when we finally have our tab called? Will China and Japan pay us any attention when they realize we can’t pay our debt and neither can we create barely a single item in our country that can’t be made elsewhere? Who would truly be surprised that in twenty years the B.R.I.C. (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries as well as the oil and energy producers are the strongest nations in the world? Where does America fit in after defaulting on the national debt and not being able to produce anything since industry has left and taxation hinders the economy?

Our freedom, quality of life, and livelihood is tied an incredible amount to our debt. Our collective future and the future of our children is tied more to our debt than most any politician would ever tell you. We cannot maneuver our country when we have over $14 trillion of debt tied to our ankles. We can’t tax our economy to death to pay for this debt. We can’t print the debt off without destroying our currency and therefore our economy. Our only saving grace is that China and Japan haven’t really figured out we’re not good on our debt. What do you think is going to happen when any one of these options of payment or non-payment have to be faced today? Please take a look at the graphic:

When you have a chance, check out the site yourself. Watch the numbers grow before your eyes. Does it merit a response right now? If not, you have to acknowledge, at some point, it will matter.

We will either drown in our own debt while a country that is more self reliant (most likely China) will grow to become more powerful economically and militarily than the United States. We will either become a group of people voting for the most hand-outs or for we will remove the broken system and start being responsible for ourselves. That is, unless you and every other taxpayer has a spare $113k lying around.

Oh I’m sorry, I forgot to mention the promises we’ve made on our own citizens. Make that $348k per citizen (taxpayer or otherwise). Don’t worry. The numbers are growing. Does it matter yet?

A Great Failure

Something I have been struggling with as of late is the purpose of my life in specificity. Disclaimer: I am a Christian who knows my goal in life is to serve God by serving others. This part is very clear to me. Any and all prayer and contemplation vividly emphasize serving others. What I have been struggling with is the specifics of the service.

Currently I run my own service based company as well as act in multiple roles for another company. It is plenty enough to keep my time occupied (and then some). What I worry about is ensuring that I am engaged in what my maximum potential truly is. I love working with people with my company and working for the other company and I have no complaints about it. But I also have many ideas that I would like to develop into companies, technologies, and projects. Many of the ideas are something I feel that would help many people and make a big positive impact or fuel many great projects. I will not reject the people I serve but I cannot ignore the future ideas. This is getting to an interesting point in life.

I find myself putting away things that were a large part of my personality and life. A tremendous amount of my childhood was spent boating, fishing, biking, go-carting, gaming, paint balling, and many other “ing’s”. Now I must face a certain reality. I am at a point where a child is a very possible reality in my near future. I am also realizing I am responsible for my family, church, community, and globe. If there is anything I can do it make anything better by sacrificing a recreational activity, I must do it. There isn’t a logical reason to procrastinate on this reality. The wonderful thing that has been developing in my life is that I find my mind is growing a love for serving others and developing ideas that make other peoples lives better. Anything that takes away from that is truly exponentially detrimental and not  just for myself. It is time to maximize my potential and live it.

It would be a great failure to look at the fork in the road and choose the easier and more selfish path. The hard work is ahead and I will embrace the ups and downs as best I can.