Bankrupt? Gabrielle Giffords for President?

The word bankrupt is derived from two words, banca rotta, which means broken bench.  Money changers in Italy were once given a bench in the town square to lend and borrow.  If they made bad loans and couldn’t pay back their creditors, their bench was broken, sometimes over their head.  They didn’t get a chance to explain how important they were to the economy and why the people of the village should be on the hook to bail them out.  They were discredited by their poor decisions, and allowing them to continue would have been a poor example to others who wished to lend or borrow.

Today, we live in a nation that is morally bankrupt.  Not only are there few consequences for incompetence, but outright corruption is allowed to fester until institutions collapse.  Churches file for bankruptcy not because of financial mismanagement, but because they’ve repeatedly raped children for decades.  Camden, New Jersey has the second highest crime rate in America, yet it must lay off half its police force because our police state is running out of money.  Crime profiteers have broken the taxpayers’ back, without even beginning to solve our crime problem.  Drug and alcohol abuse have skyrocketed since the beginning of the recession.  So much for the trillion dollars spent on the War on Drugs.  Where are the results?

While there are always those who look for the apocalypse, many are now hoping it will come soon.  After Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot, people wondered whether she would recover and run for president in six years.  Could she fulfill Revelation 13, 3?  “I saw that one of its heads seemed to have been mortally wounded, but this mortal wound has healed.  Fascinated, the whole world followed after the beast.”  A head refers to a head of state, etc…

My point isn’t that this poor lady is the devil, and if she were she could hardly damage the nation any more than what our politicians have done over the last twenty years. The problem is that there is so little hope in our leaders’ ability to solve our problems that people are looking forward to the end.  What impact will this have on their thinking and behavior?

After the shooting in Tucson, there was a lot of attention given to the tone of public discourse.  What about the substance?  I don’t see how we start holding our leaders accountable for what they’ve done in a nice tone.  Millions are losing their livelihoods and there are so many tragedies as a result.  It’s absurd that the debate hasn’t become more blunt.  Our politicians have now wasted two years dancing around the issues with their rhetoric. 

Our nation’s fiscal crisis is the direct result of a bankruptcy of morals, ideals and leadership.  When leaders fail and we don’t recognize it, and discredit them, what incentive is there for fellow politicians to do the right thing?  None, and the failure becomes systemic.  We’ve stepped over a precipice and only after falling hundreds of feet have some realized that errors have been made, others fight to maintain our suicidal policies.

It won’t be one leader that saves us.  Only an informed public can save a democracy.  Let’s not waste any time trying to figure out who will be the antichrist, or we might end up seeing him/her everywhere.  Let’s advocate the ideas that will turn America around.

To see the solutions I have proposed, please check out www.politicsandjustice.com.