A Look Back:

The Problems Facing America in 2008

To give my immune system an extra challenge last week, I caught a cold. So, between the energy needed to defeat that and the energy needed to repair all the damaged tissue around the knee, I’ve been sleeping most of the time I normally work. Thus, this issue, and possibly the next, will be a look back at some things I wrote about years ago.

I’m starting with this little piece, in which I worried about some of the major problems facing America back then. Reading it now, I’m 80% discouraged, but 20% hopeful.

Discouraged because every problem I cited (including being involved in an expensive proxy war) has gotten worse. Hopeful because America is still alive and kicking and may be able to make it through the madness once again.

Let me know what you think…

From Early to Rise, October 31, 2008 

Several of my golfing buddies are worried that the American Empire is crumbling.

Every day, we wake up to news that signals its demise. Soaring debt, collapsing financial institutions, looming climate change, hurricanes that wipe out entire cities, decaying public infrastructure, healthcare that is the worst among the developed nations, an unnecessary war that is costing us billions – and a government that has been telling us that if we just keep buying consumer goods with our credit cards, all will be fine.

And what are we doing about it? Our economists are arguing about economic theory. Political candidates are shouting slogans at one another. Our representatives in Washington are bailing out big businesses by asking us to pay for their greed.

For more than two decades, Americans have been getting poorer, not richer. Since World War II, America has been involved in unnecessary wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of our young people, cost us trillions of dollars, and have benefited only the war industry that was, before World War II, non-existent.

We are told we can’t afford to provide basic healthcare to our poor, and yet we spend hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out big banks and insurance companies that went bust because they gave in to greed. And they were helped along the way by the federal government urging us to spend, spend, spend!

The problem is not with most of the American people, who are as hardworking, industrious, and bighearted as ever. The problem is that big government has made a devious plot with big business. And the two, working closely together, are duping Americans into continuing to spend money they don’t have for causes that were invented purely and simply to take advantage of our big hearts.

We are probably already too far down the slippery slope of an economic landslide to prevent a depression. We have only one hope for survival. As we live through these next five to 10 years, working harder and getting poorer and paying more taxes to pay past government bills, we must remember to trust neither our government nor our largest corporations.

The salvation will not come from the government. Or from the huge industries that are lining up with the government right now. Their goal is to make Americans dependent on them for everything, from earning a living, to healthcare and safety, to planning meals, and taking vacations, and even to what they read in their magazines and newspapers and watch on TV or the internet.

And they will work in lockstep with the public education industry and the government-military complex to make sure that most Americans and their children are happy about becoming wards of the State.

I don’t know if there could be a political solution to this. Politicians want to get elected. And getting elected is much easier if you promise to give the electorate everything they want and everything they think they need, from the government or huge companies aligned with the government, for free.

If there is any salvation it will be in the diligence and productivity of individual Americans who will, despite the worst sorts of external conditions, continue to work hard and smart to protect and care for their families and themselves.

If I’ve written anything in the past two weeks that offended you, I have a good excuse.

I had knee replacement surgery on June 22. The operation was successful. It was performed by a surgeon who happened to go to the same middle school as did Number Three Son. If you are anywhere near my age, you know someone who has had knee replacement surgery (if you haven’t had it yourself). For my younger readers, you should know that although the surgery itself has a history of good results, the post-operative recovery can be a bitch. During the first two weeks especially, the pain can be agonizing.

(Before you say it – I admit I have no authority to use this metaphor. But it felt very much like I was giving birth to a small, angry child through my knee.)

Which is to say, when painkillers were offered, I took them. Initially, I was eating 5 mg of oxycodone every four hours, day and night.

The effectiveness of painkillers varies from person to person. For some, they work instantly and completely. For others, they hardly work at all. Regardless of their success reducing pain, they almost invariably produce side effects. The two most common are physical fatigue and brain fog. (My friend AC’s theory is that they aren’t even intended to stop the pain. Instead, they make your brain so stupid that you don’t notice it!)

I’m experiencing both of these side effects. And it’s frustrating, to say the least. A walk that took 30 seconds when I was able-bodied takes me three minutes now. A paragraph that took five minutes to write when I was able-brained takes me half an hour. That means my productivity meter (which I check every day) is down about 70%.

And I almost forgot! The memory! That’s almost completely gone. I swear, a half-hour after I’ve done something or said something or had someone say something to me, it disappears from my memory banks. Like bubbles on Champagne. I mean, really. Gone. As in, “No recollection.” As in, “Nada.” As in, “You don’t remember saying you wanted mustard on your sandwich 15 seconds ago?”

So, that’s what’s been going on with yours truly. Pain. Brain fog. Fatigue. Now you know.

The good news is that the knee is getting noticeably better every day. As for the brain? I’m not so sure about that. But I’m not particularly concerned about it. I’ve always been what they used to call “absent minded,” and that never seemed like a bad thing to me. Yes, I’ve missed a lot of what was going on right in front of my eyes, but I was using that time to regurgitate information that happened to slip into the folds sometime in the past.

I don’t like severe pain. Physical or psychological. And as I get older and become more familiar with it, I want to think that there will always be some sort of drug nearby to put me out of my misery. But I don’t have that feeling about going senile that so many people my age seem to have. I always tell my kids, “Look into my eyes. If I’m not in pain, I’m fine. Let me and my absent mind be.” Of course, if it gets to the point where I’m fouling my pants, take me out. That indignity I would not want to endure, let alone impose on my children.