View from a Wolf

I often wonder if one of the reasons the western world will collapse soon is because we’re all a bunch of whiny bitches?

Every where you go, you read about someone complaining about this politician or that one, as if even the President or Prime Minister has the power to actually *do* anything of significance to affect our lives.  Other than f**k things up I mean.

Let’s face it – we’ve become a pair of nations (the U.S. and Canada – don’t even get me started on Europe!) who prefer to blame our troubles on the other guy, instead of ourselves.  We prefer whining to problem-solving.

We sure aren’t our ancient honoured relatives, that’s for sure.  The ones we joke about; the ones who told us about how they used to walk five miles to school during blinding blizzards.  Up hill.  Both ways.

The truth of their state of mind isn’t far off from that though.  They took pride in their accomplishment, and in their hard work and sweat, and they took special pride in the fact that they didn’t look for handouts from anyone.

How far we’ve come, huh?  Now we collectively have our hand out to everyone, and especially the government.  We’ve become entitled nations.  It’s our RIGHT to be affluent.   It’s our right not to have our feelings hurt, too.  About anything.

If John Wayne were alive today, he’d bitch-slap some sense into the lot of us.  I’m sure of it.

So, politicians, in fear for their survival, scramble to cater to our sense of entitlement. The economy is broken?  Well we’d better borrow as much money from China as we can to shore it up.  And oh by the way, WHY exactly is the economy broken?  Well, Virginia, it’s like this:   we as a government didn’t want people not to be able to afford homes, so we just said “listen – you want a home, you got it. Don’t worry about saving up for an adequate down payment; we’ve got you covered.  in fact, we’ll make it a law.  There.  Feel better?”  Then, reality put it’s foot in the door, and this careful entitled house of cards (to mix a metaphor almost to death) came tumbling down.

I’ve been around long enough to have observed a fundamental truth about government.  The best government is the one that sits still and does close to nothing.  They don’t make major changes or try to stir the pot.  They instead just maintain systems as they are.  They are unimaginative and mostly boring.  Such is the state of Canadian politics right now by virtue of the fact that there’s a minority government in place;  the governing party can’t do too much without the consent of at least one of the other two opposition parties.

That’s a good thing.  It keeps everyone honest but most importantly, it keeps them stagnant.

Governments by and large don’t like to sit still.  They worry that the citizens are going to complain that they’re not getting their (entitled) money’s worth.  Trust me, they are.  I would be more glad to pay my taxes if government would just sit down, shut the fuck up, and do nothing.