Do I only get five?
1) National debt and the interest thereon In 2000, over 1/3 of our national revenue was going to pay the INTEREST on the national debt. Not principle, the interest. Think about that a moment: say you have consumer debt in the form of credit cards. Imagine if a full 1/3 of your income were paying just the interest on those credit cards. Not the principle, the interest. Not only would you never be able to pay them down, you would never, ever be fiscally solvent like that.
Now, the situation is worse. We are adding trillions to the national debt, AND we've given the major taxpayers--the ultrawealthy--huge tax breaks so the national revenue is even less. I'd be quite surprised if the amount of the national revenue paying interest on the debt now weren't somewhere in the range of 40-45%.
Now, not only does this mean that we cannot ever be solvent in such a situation, but the vast majority of that debt in being held by China and Japan. They have our currency hostage and can use the situation to influence trade and foreign relations negotiations, essentially blackmailing us into playing by their rules. All they have to do is call in their chips and the dollar isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Someone, and I'm too lazy to look up my notes to remember exactly who, but it was some representative of the Chinese national bank I believe, actually BRAGGED about the situation to the media. I believe the quote was "The American dollar is at the mercy of Asian governments."
2) The ascendency of the religious far-right Looking at the evolution of social policies in the last 30 years, it's very obvious that the religious far-right is in ascendency in our government, and the situation is getting worse, rather than better. This is dominating a plethora of social issues from gay marriage to the curriculum taught in school science and health classes to, of course, a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body.
It wouldn't be so bad if I truly believed that the government officials making these policies were doing so out of genuine conviction and to keep true to the actual will of the people, but they're not. They're inflating issues they really couldn't otherwise be bothered with because they know if they make it sound shocking enough, it will motivate the slightly right-leaning moderates who might have otherwise not voted for them. Look at how, amid all the other MAJOR sh
[/i]it going on, gay marriage and stem-cell research became huge issues in the 2004 election. They became huge issues because the right-wingers got on TV and talked about them and talked about them until they motivated voters who would have otherwise stayed at home to get to the polls just to vote on those issues, and then incidentally vote for the guys that had been talking about them [i]ad nauseum. It's pandering, and it's really quite reprehensible.
3) The environment Being, as I am, 31 years old and looking the biological clock straight in the face, I've had to weigh the pros and cons of having a child recently. And one of the most significant cons that occured to me is that I am not sure I want to subject a person I've given birth to and loved, and their children after them, to the place that this world will be in 50 to 100 years. It's not going to be a nice place, or a healthy place, and I'm really not sure we could undo the damage now even if we started full-steam efforts to do so immediately. I'm not sure it's right to being a child into that and leave them with that legacy.
4) The waning right to choose I know this probably should have been part of #2, but frankly I think it's major enough to deserve it's own bullet point.
I saw
this Frontline report last week and almost cried at how utterly irretrievable this situation is becoming. As a soon-to-be nurse midwife who will be providing women's gynecological and obstetrical services, I'm going to be in a position of having to deal with women the scope of whose choices is rapidly becoming narrower and narrower.
Deadly back alley abortions WILL be a reality again in the next 20 years, bet on it. And as a women's health care provider, I'll be cleaning up the mess they leave behind.
5) Iraq This is the Vietnam of our era, make no mistake. We will be lucky if we are out of there in 10 years, more realistically count on 15 or 20. And when we DO pull out, it will be with our tail between our legs, having succeeded in doing absolutely nothing but making the situation worse, and only because the people finally got completely fed up and DEMANDED we get the hell out of there. Anyone who thinks this is a short-term war is dreaming. And I'm not calling it the War on Terror because Iraq. Never. Fu
[/i]cking. Committed. A. Terrorist. Attack. Against. Us. (not until [i]after we invaded their sovereign territory, that is.) Calling it the "War on Terror" is only one of the plethora of ways the administration morphed Al Qaida into Iraq to convince the idiot public the war was necessary.
Okay, I'm out.
Edited, Mon Nov 14 07:01:14 2005 by Ambrya