So, we are told by the media pundits that "the American people don't care about the deficit. They care about jobs, jobs, jobs."
That seems perfectly reasonable to me, but the knotty problem I have yet to hear a single pundit or politician address is: What jobs, precisely? Where are these jobs supposed to come from?
We have closed most of our factories and sent manufacturing jobs off to be done by children in Third World countries. Our schools are falling to pieces. Anyhow, who wants to train to be an engineer, which may require some actual hard studying, when you can go and work on Wall Street with its lovely fat bonuses, or become a hedge funder and put your name down on the waiting list for a Ferrari?
There is occasional mention that perhaps we should do something about our disintegrating infrastructure, but the nation can't really afford that, what with all these corporate jets and oil companies that need subsidizing.
And the super-rich, poor dears, really cannot be asked to make yet more sacrifices and pay a tiny bit more in taxes when one or two of them have already had to cancel orders for new super-yachts.
It would be un-American to stop spending zillions on unwinnable wars and military shenanigans all over the Middle East. Anyhow, if we bring the troops home, there are no jobs for them.
One thing is glaringly obvious: We can't look to our government for solutions. The Republicans are far too busy fund-raising and putting a stop to abortion and making sure Obama doesn't win a second term, and the Democrats seem mostly to have morphed into a bunch of wussies.
So what do we do? I have no idea. But I have a suspicion that salvation doesn't lie in the higher echelons of corrupt, greedy, international power and money. I think we—"we the people"—are going to have to save ourselves. And the good news is that in doing so we are going to create lots of good, honest, honorable jobs.
DIANA FASSINO
Ketchum
