Among Other Things: Sound familiar?
Remember last November our column advised politicians “When the outgo exceeds the income, the upkeep will be your downfall?” While some politicians were defeated in their bids for election or reelection, I should have said, “the upkeep will be OUR downfall.”
As we shake our heads in bewilderment at the ongoing political/economic perplexities that have muddled and befuddled us the past few weeks — and years — we can’t help but wonder what Will Rogers might have said. Although he died in an airplane crash in Alaska Territory in August 1935 in the midst of the Great Depression, his comments seem eerily applicable to today’s difficulties.
Complete with his deliberate grammatical and spelling miscues, do any of the cowboy humorist’s remarks fit today? Here’s what he said and/or wrote:
As we look back on it now, somebody ought to have taken each one of us and soaked our fat heads. We bought everything under the sun, but where was our payments going to be if we lost our jobs? Why, that had never entered our heads. Why should we lose our jobs? Wasn’t all our big men telling us things was even going to get better? Was our prominent men warning us? If we had had a “prominent” man he would have, but we just didn’t have any.
You know, there was a time when we couldent spell a “billion” dollars, much less realize it, count it, or anything. But now, as a nation, we learn pretty fast, till it won’t be long now, and we’ll be working on the word “trillion.” You’ll read in the papers, “Congress has just been asked to appropriate two trillion dollars to relieve the descendants of a race of people called “Wall Streeters.” The paper will go on to say, “This is a worthy cause, and no doubt this small appropriation will be made, as they are the wards of the government.”
Our problem is not what is the dollar worth in London, Rome or Paris, or what even it is worth at home. It’s how to get hold of it, whatever it’s worth.
Last year we said “Things can’t go on like this,” and they didn’t; they got worse.
Common sense is not an issue in politics, it’s an affliction. Neither is honesty an issue in politics, it’s a miracle.
If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?
It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.
Politics has become so expensive that it takes a lot of money even to be defeated.
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But some things have changed. Will once said that the trouble with Democrats was that they all wanted to be president. Today he might say that the trouble with Republicans is that they all want to be president.
At this point, guessing who the nominee will be from today’s field of GOPster hopefuls is like trying to pick a winning lottery number.