Politics; Our new national pastime: Printing funny money.
May 17, 2020 by Staff
Filed under Money/Business, News, Politics, Weekly Columns
(Akiit.com) Ever play Monopoly? Wasn’t it fun to have little piles of “money,” little paper bills that seem like real money? And if you were good at it, wasn’t it fun to wind up owning Park Place and hotels and eventually maybe winning the whole game?
Did you ever try to actually spend any of those bills? Unless you were very young and had an indulgent grandmother who wanted to humor you with a cookie or some hot chocolate, you were reminded this was just a game – and that your play “money” was only good when you were playing the board game.
But now we’re all grown up … aren’t we?
Oh sure, we’re very adult now. We’re used to losing 70,000 of our citizens to drug abuse every year, over 480,000 to cigarettes and vaping, and wee hardly pay any attention to the million-plus abortions we pay for with our taxes – all of them useless, little unwanted kids.
Very adult, sophisticated and self sufficient. But now – now, we seem to really be in trouble!
Yes, we’re in the middle of an unprecedented crisis, worse in some ways than the world wars we fought and eventually won. We’ve been attacked by an invisible but very deadly enemy, and it’s understandable that many are reacting in panic like in that childhood fable, Chicken Little. “Run for cover … the sky is falling!”
But there’s nowhere to run. We’ve got to face this enemy head on, try to come to the aid of those already wounded, with inadequate weapons, and at the same time try to protect ourselves from becoming casualties.
Yes, this is a world problem, with almost all other nations attacked just like we are. But this isn’t “overseas” this time – it’s on our own shores, in our own towns, in our own neighborhoods, and even in our own homes!
The clock is running, the enemy relentless, and we’re all looking for answers.
It was good, even necessary, to run for cover in whatever way we could. It was also good and necessary to look for whatever we could do for the wounded, the sick, the seriously threatened.
And in spite of the dangers and the enormity of the challenges, not even knowing for sure what we were fighting, this country and its leaders jumped into the fray and started developing whatever defenses we could, whatever treatments and care for the fallen we could come up with – and as always, determined to “see it through,” to find answers and to “get through this.”
But – BUT – unlike any other war or nation-threatening crisis we’ve faced, there was not the unanimous pulling together, the dropping of political differences, with everybody looking for whatever it might take to help the most needy, in a spirit of rational, selfless dedication to the common good.
Oh yes, there was a lot of that, as you expect from Americans – but almost from the first awareness of the crisis, we’ve also been afflicted with a wholesale, mounting, clamorous “blame game,” confusing and obfuscating the otherwise total efforts to overcome the enemy.
While the president, like any responsible president, quickly assessed the coming tidal wave, determined its source, assembled medical, military and governmental experts and committed to an almost 24-hour-a-day campaign to defend over 300 million of us from an unavoidable disaster – his political opponents decided this terrible calamity was a great opportunity to blame the whole thing on the president and make sure he wouldn’t be reelected!
You think I’m kidding, making this up, that it’s some kind of terrible joke or partisan accusation? Please, fellow American, look at the stark facts.
Because of the dread likelihood of widespread serious illness – and many thousands of unavoidable deaths – the experts and the president directed use of individual masking, gloves and social separation to hopefully slow down the spread of the highly contagious virus.
And assuming most Americans wouldn’t take personal precautions, the call came for emergency shutdown of most businesses to prevent contagious interaction.
Do I have to tell you how suicidal that was – and is?
You’re seeing and experiencing the fatal fallout of shutting down American commerce, independent businesses small and large, and of severely limiting all social connections that make our country who we are!
Meanwhile, President Trump’s avowed political enemies constantly accuse their elected leader of not doing enough to set everything right – as if they had divine guidance on some better, undefined way!
But, as the rabid enemies’ newly designated leader just said ecstatically, “This is our chance to transform this country!”
What? That’s his focus? That’s really how those being so harshly critical of the very people who are trying to save us all are seeing this? YES, IT IS!
In a desperate effort to “bail out” or keep small businesses from simply vanishing, and to rescue temporarily millions of Americans who have lost their jobs, their livelihood, their ability to provide for their families – Congress and the president printed up almost 3 trillion dollars, backed by nothing but promises, and spread it out as best they could to the ones who needed it most.
Nice effort, crazy as it is – but now the House of Representatives is proposing printing up 3 trillion more useless pieces of paper to fund their political objectives, in the guise of “helping those out of work.”
It’s as if you were playing Monopoly and losing – and you went in the other room, grabbed some paper, cut it up into the right little sizes, wrote “Million Dollars” on each piece – and went back to the game, declaring yourself the winner! You think anybody will ever want to play with you again?
So what should we do?
I’m not God. But I know Who is. And He’s got our attention … as He always has when we’re in terrible danger and have no good answers
But now He wants our INTENTION.
Right now, there are no logical overall solutions. More people will die, thousands of businesses will not come back, and almost all of us will suffer in many inescapable ways. Life as we’ve known it will not return to what we call “normal,” and perhaps that’s as it should be. In many ways, “normal” has become corrupt.
Collectively, we’ve allowed our country to become no longer “One Nation Under God,” even though our currency still says, ironically, “In God We Trust” – as it loses all value faster than we can print up more of it.
IF, starting right now and continuing into the second half of this year, millions of us fall on our knees, crying out earnestly to the God who created and gave us all we’ve ever had of real value, IF we make personal and corporate vows to seek Him again, pray to Him and pledge ourselves and our future to Him, and IF we mean it in our hearts, then Almighty God – Who, as our Declaration declares, created all men equal and endowed us with the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – just may rescue us one more time.
Printing 3 billion more meaningless pieces of paper money will only make the whole game worthless.
“Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it: unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” (Psalm 127:1)
Columnist; Pat Boone
Official website; https://twitter.com/Pat_Boone