Stupid Americans

I read with interest this evening that 53% of Americans want the tax cuts of George Bush to continue, even if this means giving a tax break to people making more than $250,000 a year.

My question is simply this:  How can anyone reconcile our current economic reality with the belief that we should continue to cut taxes?  I mean, sure, no one likes paying taxes, but we want to educate our kids, have police arrest the bad guys, have troops stationed in 150+ countries around the world, spend stupid amounts of money on defense, and at some point pay back communist China all the money George Bush borrowed for his stupid wars.  And all this costs money, and that money needs to be raised from taxes.

When I watch the news these days a few things are beginning to scare me.  Not so scared I get a bunker survival kit and an assault rifle, but still I feel like I am watching the American political system disintigrate before my very eyes.

The Tea Party are becoming a potent political force in America, managing to push some really useless candidates into politics on the platform of smaller government and lower taxes.  Yet the reality is they are almost universally supporting Republicans who were part of the machine that increased the size and scope of the government almost exponentially under George Bush.

At the same time they seem to be campaigning for the millionaire and billionaire tax cuts that benefit about 1% of Americans.  Their logic being that if we keep giving these rich assholes money, eventually it will 'trickle down' to ordinary people.  There's no actual logic or evidence to support this concept, but it is still presented as a good idea.

All that said, I'd like to say something to Americans that no politician seems to want to fess up and say:  George Bush spent all our money.  And when he was done spending a bunch of money we didn't have and increasing the size of our government, he borrowed money from communist China to further his goals.  Now at some point we need to pay off our debt.  So we have to make some hard choices.  We need to increase taxes, or radically decrease spending, which in real terms means slashing pensions for old people or significantly scaling back the military and our ability to invade countries at whim and stay there for years.

I just want to know when the majority of Americans will understand this simple reality and stop talking about tax cuts and evil Obamacare and other nonsense.

The elephant in the room here in America is our stupidly big defense budget, and our love of the idea that we can have our cake and eat it too.  If we are going to station our troops in 150+ countries, wage war, have thousands of nuclear weapons, build special border fences to keep out the immigrants, and actively oppose gay marriage and abortion all while prosecuting the pointless and futile war on drugs, we have to RAISE taxes for everyone; especially the wealthy.

Sadly though, no one seems to want to talk about it.  The GOP just spout stupid sound bites about efficiency, spending cuts, and fiscal responsibility.  But they won't have the intellectual honesty to be real with us and tell us that the only way out of our hole is to raise taxes.  And worse, they won't admit it is their irresponsible and failed policies that left us needing this discussion in the first place.