WHAT IF?

I do not usually talk about politics on this blog, as I find the entire subject to be rather…well…boring. But being a history buff, I cannot resist the chance to write a little bit about what I have been observing in our nation lately, and what it might lead to.

Please bear in mind that the statements I make here are all based on what I have observed, and are biased according to my limited perspective. What does that mean? I guess it means that just because I write it doesn’t mean it will happen, or that it is necessarily true. As I said, these are statements made based on my observations from my limited perspective. If you want an error free document, then you need to ask God, who sees so much more than I do.

Everywhere I go, I hear people talk about what our nation is doing, what it is about, and what they think we should do. The number of differing opinions is broad, but strangely, it seems to me that these “differing” opinions are coming nearer to agreement.

For example, the other day I was listening to some fellows discuss the Iraqi war, Hurricane devastation, gasoline prices, the economy, and what we should do about all of this. The two men had differing opinions about the amount of damage the hurricane had done, how high gas prices would soar, whether we should have been in Iraq, and how badly the economy was going to be hit by this latest catastrophe. I see that type of thing often. What I do not see often, but have been seeing quite a bit lately, especially since Katrina hit, is the agreement on what should be done about all of this.

The only area the two men agreed upon was our nation’s next course of action. I quote, “We should take Iraq’s oil, we’re already there; why should we suffer so they don’t have to? Who’s going to stop us?”

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard similar “solutions” in the past week.

But this is America, we don’t attack and steal from those we are trying to help, do we?

We haven’t…yet.

Imagine one year from now. What if…

Another Level five hurricane strikes us, say in Florida and then farther north on the Eastern seaboard. It’s possible.

What if…

The terrorists, by sheer luck again, succeed in attacking us in a huge way again. It’s possible.

What if…

None of the above happens. Instead, the American economy, weighed down by revolving credit and over-financed corporations, rapidly deteriorates, to the point where we were in the 1920’s? Possible?

What if…

The average single mother earns $ 6.00 to $8.00 per hour, drives through twenty gallons of gasoline a week, and is having a hard time making ends meet. Consider that at $8.00 per hour, at current gas prices, this single mom spends almost twenty-five percent of her check on gasoline. That is just one facet of the expenses she incurs with her paycheck.

That last statement isn’t really a “what if”, it is currently a reality for millions of Americans.

What if…

The current price increase causes the Christmas shopping season to be an all-time low volume producer? It’s possible.

What if because of the new rise in gas prices, America’s economy forces us to live at less than what we are accustomed to, at lower than the “way of life” we all screamed about on September 11, 2001? What if this latest “blip” is the straw that breaks the American Camel’s back? It’s possible.

Why is it possible? Because most of these “what if” statements are no longer a long shot. Some of them are primed to occur.

If the American economy, driven by consumption, is no longer supported by that consumption because its people can no longer afford to consume up to their past standards, what will happen? Do we have any economics majors in our audience? Come on…what will happen?

Does anyone know the current proportion of poor to middle class citizens in our nation? Is anyone aware that the proportion grows yearly already? What does this mean? To me, it means that our nation is already spiraling downward, and the only remedy anyone has offered is a few nominal tax cuts, and more revolving credit at ungodly interest rates. Not a real solution, obviously.

Can anyone tell me if the two gentlemen I listened to are on to something?

Please understand, I do not condone that type of thinking. In fact, I am totally against it. However, ALL of world history is against us on this one. There has never been a nation who has sacrificed its own citizens for the sake of its “principles”. It has never happened, not even once. And I don’t mean sending a few hundred thousand soldiers to a foreign nation to do battle with an evil enemy. Rather, what I mean is this; no nation has ever idly allowed its own citizens to be destroyed economically so that said nation wouldn’t have to attack its neighbor, or any nation, to steal and plunder what said nation felt it required to survive. In other words, history bears out ALWAYS that when a nation is desperate, “principle” flies out the window. I do not think our nation would be any different.

I am not saying our nation is about to go through a catastrophic economic downfall, or ruin. I think it is possible for us to suffer that, though…very, very possible, and possibly very soon.

The question is, what would our nation do about such a conundrum? Could our nation even do anything? Babylon fell due to decadence. Rome fell the same way. The rise of those two nations, however, was strikingly different than ours. Some nations are built on war, while others are destroyed through it.

Germany is one such example. Faced with no space for its citizens, and an ever dwindling economy, Germany decided to steal what it could not buy, and in today’s world, as ever, there is only one way nations steal; through war.

The two men I listened to are just one example of many I have heard over the last week. In fact, I have never heard so much talk of our nation “stealing” what we cannot buy, with everyday citizens actually suggesting regularly that this is the only course.

Things aren’t even that bad for us yet, and this is what our citizens are discussing openly? Tell me, what would it take for our citizens to demand that kind of action from our government, to openly support such a decision?

Before you answer that with some unheard of catastrophe, or by saying it would never happen, please recall the battle cry of our politicians on the days after September eleventh., 2001. Down to each politician, I heard the same words, almost as though it was “the company line”.

Those words were, and I quote, “America will do WHATEVER is necessary to MAINTAIN our way of life”. I didn’t hear a single American citizen complain about such a statement, and let’s not forget the power of our politicians and the media to paint a much more dreary picture than what reality is. Could the media and our politicians “sell" us on the idea of going to war to maintain “our way of life”?

They already have, twice. Afghanistan, and Iraq. Sure, these are part of the “war on terror”. But just one day before September 11, 2001, how possible was it for America to go into Afghanistan and Iraq, and wage war to maintain our way of life?

My conclusion is that America will do whatever is necessary to maintain our way of life, even if that means stealing what we cannot buy. There has never been a nation who has been able to resist doing such a thing when its own citizens were at great risk. I believe our media and politicians would spin such an event in such a way as to make it sound exactly the way Hitler made his invasion of Poland sound, as if we had been attacked first.

America is a beautiful, wonderful place to live. For a long time, our nation has existed within circumstances that has allowed us to keep our principles. But in the words of Mel Gibson’s character in The Patriot, “I am a father, I have children, I can’t afford principles”. Our nation would say the same thing, if it came to it, and I wonder, is it coming to it?