A One-Man Recession Killer

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

BURLINGTON North Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—9/12/11—“He’s gotta do something to turn this country around, to get us out of this mess and back to work again.”

Of course, the man called upon to do all this is President Obama, the fixer-upper-in-chief. It would be great to have such a wonder worker at the helm, but the job is far too big for one man. Millions and millions of Obama’s fellow citizens must pitch in and help, and they must come from every level of American society, from every political faction, from poor and rich alike.

Together, we dug the hole we’re in; together we must dig our way out. And we’re going to have blisters on our hands and liniment-craving muscles before we’re done. To put the matter in the bluntest of terms, we’re going to have to kick our butts into high gear; not just our own but those of the sluggards amongst us. The kick must come hard and often.

The work-ethic that helped us become the most powerful nation in the 20^th Century must come to the fore again. Otherwise, the wand of power will surely pass into the hands of leaders in China and India. To be called a second- or third-rate nation will grate on our ears, but no ear plugs will help us avoid the unwelcome news that we’ve slipped. That we have turned to lard on our couches seems to suit us fine.

In digging our hole, some among us have had access to, and eagerness to use, power shovels. We can readily identify them—greedy investment firms hatching schemes to enrich themselves, bankers booting caution out the window, families with slender means hankering to live in McMansions, construction firms laying out millions and millions of dollars on dreamland housing projects, automobile firms needing costly bailouts, and insurance companies jacking rates or denying coverage.

Untold millions of us without power shovels took small spades in hand and dug holes that, together, became caves. Spread throughout this Monmouth opening were people who wrecked their bodies by abusing tobacco, alcohol, and addictive drugs, people whose obesity hastened the outset of diabetes, people whose lack of a sensible exercise program led to serious, if not fatal, heart conditions, people who dropped out of school and found themselves doomed to live below the poverty line. Almost all of the people within this group drained rather than contributed to our economy.

The two groups just mentioned may be looked upon as victims of their own ethical, moral, or health-related choices. Not so a third group—those that, by their votes or by their failure of statesmanlike leadership, led us into wars with Iraq and Afghanistan. Where reason should have prevailed, hyped-up patriotism hoisted the battle flag, and off we went into exchequer-bursting wars. To put the matter into the parlance of my Blue Ridge forebears, we had no dogs in those fights; rather an enemy eventually taken down by Navy Seals. Dupes that we are, when someone waves the American flag, we don’t act rationally until we suffer great harm.

Responsible as we jointly are for our present economic woes, we can’t reasonably cast stones at a single citizen among us, nor turn to one man or party to reboot us. There’s no F11 key we can push to achieve recovery. We must overcome our fear of a crash and regain confidence in the mechanisms that helped us become world leaders.

Among the steps we can take: put regulations in place that protect us from greedy operators of power shovels; replace spades with hoes, seeds, garden plots, and exciting and rewarding programs that lead to healthful living and dedication to quality learning; go to war only if constitutional conditions are met; take a clearheaded look at what role the government has in restoring the welfare of all American citizens, and cease our party-line bickering. We all have work to do, some heavy-lifting needing all our backs and muscles.

Our need to lift is urgent, for we can’t wait while bankers and corporation chiefs sit on reserves ranking among the highest on record. The boost we need, given the tail-tucking practices of banks and big business moguls, must come from the federal, state, and local governments. The boost we need, considering our own timorous spending habits, must come from federal, state, and local governments.

That is, from ourselves.

We have precedent for calling on ourselves. We did it during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration.

To make the matter personal, my jobless father joined the Civilian Conservation Corps and put food on the table, clothes on our backs, and shoes on our feet.

Neighbors of ours in Watauga County, North Carolina, found jobs building the high school I later attended, working men from around the tri-state area of North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee teamed up to construct the Blue Ridge Parkway, a scenic route that’s proved spiritually uplifting and aesthetically pleasing for millions of tourists; artists around the nation created now-cherished murals for post offices; dramatists wrote plays that helped us understand ourselves; linguists recorded speech data that scholars are now drawing on to study the features of American English; and our infrastructure received much needed repairs as new highways were being built.

We can look back at the achievements of men and women who teamed up to lift us out of the GreatDepression with pride, if we are just. Can we look back at our time and feel proud of having given the boot to teachers, policemen, firefighters; of having built hurdles for students seeking higher education; of having let our infrastructure molder away? Simply, we can’t.

It is up to us, to each of us, to kill this recession. President Obama can’t alone do it. Representative Boehner can’t. Warren Buffet can’t, even though he’s made a vital point recently in declaring that the rich among us should shed plutocratic views and join in the heavy-lifting. We each do our part by resuming responsible roles in this consumer-driven economy. From Daddy Warbucks on down.

The bottom line of this essay appealingly is: “Washington, stop bickering and provide opportunities for each of us to be recession-killers. Jump-start us now!”