Where Democracy--and the "great American experiment"--went off the cliff

The notion that people should govern themselves intuitively seems better than being forced to obey a king or dictator or the Communist Central Committee.

But even democracies have some sort of governing body, whose members presumably discern what their constituents want.  But then comes the hard part, because sometimes the "I wants" aren't affordable--or are but are stupid and will lead to disaster.

And here's where it starts to go south, because low-IQ voters--or just low-info voters--consistently elect glib, usually attractive but astonishingly dumb morons to represent 'em--like AOC, Jazzy Crockett, Cori Bush, Hank Johnson, Jamal Bowman, Maxine Waters, Cackles Harris and so on.

This was bad enough before women got the vote, and now is way worse.  I love women, but emotionalism in government is a blueprint for disaster--which brings us to the Problem:

Roman emperors spent the equivalent of billions building ports to import grain to feed the masses.  Understandable.  But if you can spend to build ports, it was only a small step to subsidize grain--government selling it to users for less than the actual cost.

No one batted an eye, cuz it seemed so reasonable!

Fast-forward to the U.S. in 1789.  (Parents: ask your kids what happened in that year.)  The Founders knew Roman history better than we do today.  No one has discovered anything more about ancient Rome, but the Founders studied it.  We stopped teaching students Roman history decades ago.  

The Founders knew beyond doubt from Roman history that politicians would eventually begin to vote to give "free shit" to voters to be popular and get re-elected.  To try to prevent this, the men who drafted the Constitution limited the federal government to specific "enumerated powers," like "Provide for the common defense" and "Establish a postal system."  (If you haven't read that document recently, try reading it.)

But since it wasn't possible to anticipate all future "crises" that might arise, the Founders added a clause called "provide for the general welfare"--which they didn't try to define.

And of course you know what happened: Stupid, short-sighted but totally cunning members of congress used the "general welfare" clause to pass a shit-ton of laws giving money--collected by the federal government--to po' folk.  And after congress passed the law taxing all "earned" income, that corruption went exponential.

That was the beginning of the end of the great American experiment--because once that door was breached there was no limit to what could be considered "the general welfare."  So first congress voted to use federal taxes to give pensions to widows of esteemed members.  Next was free food.  And today congress borrows trillions of dollars every year to give some voters "free" housing, food, free health care and thousands of dollars per month in cash.  Even free college, via student "loans" that bribem ordered taxpayers to pay off for deadbeat students--cunningly called "forgiving the loan."

We're just getting started: your corrupt congresswhores give hundreds of billions of dollars per year to certain favored "NGOs," some of which are paid as much as $25,000 for every illegal alien invader they "re-settle."  Cuz yew voted fo' dat, right?  Oh wait...you didn't.

You're forced to pay a billion or so every year to all the various "public broadcasting" entities--carefully divided among dozens of recipients so they can bleat that PBS per se only gets $800 million, ignoring all the other cunning pockets with different names but part of the same octopus.

Congress gives both your tax dollars and a trillion a year in borrowed money to damn near everything.  Democrats demand, and the spineless GOP always go along because that's how they get the Dems to throw 'em a few crumbs.

SO...today the national debt stands at $37 trillion.  Of course some of that was caused by wars: $6 billion (in 1917 dollars) for WW1, $323 billion (in 1945 dollars) for WW2, $2 billion (in 1860 dollars) for the Civil War.  And NONE of that has been paid off.  All the rest of the $37 TRILLION (that's $37,000 billions) has been giving voters "free" shit, and paying interest.

Had members of congress been responsible (don't die laughing) they would have avoided giving away free shit until the debt had been paid off, eh?  But of course they wanted to buy votes, so...you get it.

Now for the topper: There is NO realistic prospect that the corrupt congress will EVER cut spending at all, let alone by the amount necessary to avoid increasing the debt every year.

Hell, Democrats in congress have spent the past month blocking every GOP effort to cut a lousy $9 billion from the budget--less than two-tenths of one percent.

What does that tell ya?

The average voter literally has no idea where this all leads.  Your average 25-year-old believes the problem can easily be solved by simply printing mo' money--and most Dem congresswhores seem to agree.

The Leftist shitheads who run Wiki have already started hiding the true budget and the annual deficit: I just searched for "Federal spending for 2025."  Long article--and it does NOT give the federal budget anywhere.  That should tell you something.    

There's a psychological term called "incrementalism," which is a fancy word for "if change happens slowly, people consider it normal...so they stop worrying about it."  Keep that in mind as we go on.

Today the interest payments on U.S. debt is costing just over a TRILLION dollars a year.  Soon it'll be two trillion--and no one will bat an eye, because it's happened slowly enough that people consider it normal.  And as the national debt continues to increase, the people who buy government bonds will start demanding higher interest rates--which will increase the debt faster than ever.

Surely you see where this ends, right?

Don't worry: in five minutes you'll have forgotten all about this.  You want to forget, because the result is too scary to contemplate.

"Wait...what result?  I don't see any bad result!  Everything will continue just as it always has!"

No.  All rational, educated American adults know where this leads, if only unconsciously.  You just don't want to admit it.  

I don't blame ya.