Groundhog Day

I haven’t blogged for a while, which somehow seems normal.

Why?

Because every time I start to think about some new outrage to morality or the social order or the abuse of power by the rich and powerful, it turns out that I have already written about it.

Every time. Just think about that. Every time I start to think about some new outrage to morality or the social order or the abuse of power by the rich and powerful, it turns out that I have already written about it.

That may look like a repetition to you, but to me it’s the whole point. Life has suddenly become Groundhog Day.

Now, if you never saw the movie, let me explain.

Groundhog Day is a sweet, romantic movie which stars Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, and manages to hide some deep insights about the human condition in a swirl of Pennsylvania snow.

It’s about a man who finds himself living the same day over and over again, falling in love, taking advantage of people and, ultimately changing from selfish and self-centered to thoughtful and caring. After all, if you live the same life every day, what you do doesn’t really matter.

But, it does. That’s the genius of the movie.

Anyway, for me, we’re still in the first, selfish part of the film. Every day is the same. Impeachment. No Collusion. Stop the Immigrants. Investigate. Terrorists killing people across the world. Terrorists in the United States - although we don’t exactly call them that - killing people here because they don’t like their race or religion.

Every day the same. Details of places change, names change, victims change. 

Now, after a while, it gets hard to remember the details of each event, each outrage. But the indignation remains.

Much of our political discourse has dissolved into name-calling. Positions turn on a dime. Remember when Democrats thought their candidate for President deserved to be President because it was her turn? Remember when Republicans use to insist that deficits were bad because it left our children so deeply in debt?

Well, it is no longer her turn, but one of the Democrats best chances of winning the race next year was already vice-president, and there are echos in his campaign that he waited long enough and now it’s his turn.

On the Republican side, here are just two numbers that have been reported recently, and widely. Half the families in the United States could not afford to pay an unexpected $400 debt.

Now there are a lot of ways to calculate our national debt, depending on how you calculate the rising costs of things like medicare, social security and even the interest on our national debt.

Use one method and it comes to about $65,000 per person right now. Use another method and it comes out to about $400,000 per person, which for many is the cost of their house. Per person.

Good thing the President gave us all a wonderful tax cut. It only added about a trillion dollars to our national debt.

I’m still looking for a single Republican to say that was a bad thing.

Groundhog Day