Dear Dirty America

I’m so tired of reading and hearing about the fiscal cliff. All the talk of entitlement reform and paying down the deficit, and raising new revenue, and what this country has money for, and what it can’t afford.It’s all about the ballooning national deficit, as if somehow that’s the regular American Joe’s fault. As if we put a nearly decade-long invasion and occupation of Iraq on the credit cards, and wanted to fund an even longer occupation of destroying and rebuilding Afghanistan. As if we’ve been mismanaging our government’s money and spreading it all over the world to police and spy and destroy and rebuild.

As if we voted to pump tens of trillions of dollars into foreign and national banks and global corporations.

Despite the mainstream hype over the budget, the deficit, and the fiscal cliff, this isn’t the first time Washington squawked about money and talked down to the nation’s households about fixing the debt and “tightening our belts” and threatening Social Security and Medicaid and unemployment benefits to pay some of it back.

Bill Hicks, in the early 90s, talked about how sick he was of hearing about the deficit. It’s particularly striking because his analysis could almost be perfectly fit into today’s constant chattering about the fiscal cliff.

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