Re: Old German Woman Says It How It Is On Muslim Refugees
Americans may be living in relative poverty but they are certainly not poor. Too many Americans seem to feel that living the good life is their birthright and that others should be paying for it. And of course many politicians will support this nonsense in order to get elected.
The "free lunch" is in fact the notion that any middle-class American can have his dream come true - 2.3 children and a house in burbs paid-for by a good job that never ends until retirement. In fact, that "dream" is universal.
The fact of the matter is that life does not always go according to plan; and economies gyrate up 'n down, up 'n down, up 'n down. Each new generation (every 30 years) seems to have to learn this lesson-of-life.
History Lesson: In Rome plagues took thousands upon thousands of lives because the Romans did not understand that defecation should not be thrown out the window and into the streets. And still, Rome was the first city on this planet to have more than one million people as residents. (In the Great Plague, hundreds of thousands died for the same reason across Europe.)
We've made a lot of progress since, so there is hope we, as a nation, will understand one day economic up- and down-turns are a fundamental part of living - just like the change in seasons.
The US is at war right now even if many Americans don't seem to know it. Islamists aren't going to give you any free butter.
The US is not "at war", which has become a useless dysphemism - the proper word is "conflict". There will always be such conflicts somewhere on the planet, but why that should be the constant refrain of a government justifying aberrant Defense Spending is beyond imagination. Our priorities should be elsewhere, and that elsewhere is obvious to the naked-eye.
Orwell's predictive "1984" is way, way behind us; there is no BigBrother reminding us about a constant-war out on the periphery of the nation. And there is no need whatsoever to spend 20% of the national budget on Boy'sToys (that the girls nowadays can also play with), when the nation's plight is actually far too much abject poverty. (50 million Americans below the Poverty Threshold.)
Let's "grow up" in America, shall we ... ?