1350 Rational Ratios

There’s this big political movement starting. The moderation movement. The 70% of us people in the middle of modern political discourse are fighting for a voice.
Comic newscasters Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are holding “Restore Sanity” and “Keep the Fear Alive” rallies in Washington DC. Even more importantly, independent figures like New York’s Mayor Bloomberg are throwing weight—and money—behind centrist candidates across the US.
Good luck. Moderation doesn’t sell newspapers or generate passionate blogs. In this day of vituperation and bloviation, quiet, reasoned arguments have no place. Which would you rather watch, gladiators coming at each other with flaming swords—or the college debate team?
Statistics show how conflicted we are. The big Tea Party mantra is for less government and less taxes. I’d like that too. And perhaps a magic carpet ride and an end to any conflict in Afghanistan.
But the figures on the ground show different. Nearly 50% of our population receives some form of government assistance—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps. About 45% of adults pay no income taxes at all. But you hear people on Medicare railing against the new healthcare law. You see old Tea Partiers on Social Security with nothing better to do manning rallies decrying big government. The same one that’s paying their check.
So where’s the reason? Can we think this through? It’s mighty complex, and we’ll probably have to pay higher taxes. Everyone.
Even the not-so-rational 25% of our population that still believes the world literally started 6014 years ago.
Which it did in a way. The world as we know it. Because that’s actually about the time the first villagers quite reasonably pooled their resources and taxed themselves to fix the first pothole.
And civil-ization was born.
America, ya gotta love it.