Who is really on trial?

From the daily news about the presidential election, or the Wisconsin recall election, one might think it is right-wing vs left-wing politics that is on trial, or Republican vs Democratic ideologies.  But it isn’t. It is we, the American voters, who are on trial these days.

In the end, it is we, the American voters, who have voted in politicians of both parties who swelled the state and federal deficits, buying our votes and handing out goodies to us funded by our own children’s inheritances.  It is we, the American voters, who have made it political suicide for a politician to propose balanced budgets or sensible fiscal restraint.

In the end, it is we, the American voters, who have allowed, with almost no complaint, a massive reduction of our own civil liberties, so that torture, execution without trial, warrantless searches, tapping of telephones and email, etc, etc are not only legal for the federal government, but now widely practiced.

In the end, it is we, the America voters, who have allowed, with almost no complaint, the growth of unlimited political influence by both corporations and unions, so that we now truly have “the best government money can buy”.

In the end it is we, the American voters, who have allowed successive administrations of both parties to (a) get us into wars without Congressional debate or approval, and (b) to finance those wars with borrowed money, to the serious detriment of our nation’s finances.

If we, the American voters, can’t grow up and behave like responsible adults, and insist that the politicians we elect behave like responsible adults, we deserve the (very, very unpleasant) consequences we will inevitably get, and probably sooner rather than later.

So these next few years will really be a test to see if we, the American voters, have become so addicted to our “entitlements”, so distanced from our ancestor’s values of prudence and thrift and hard work and self-reliance, and so disconnected from reality, that we are unwilling to change our ways even as we head toward national disaster.

Who is really on trial these days is we, the American voters!