originally posted in February 2018
Man is by nature selfish and greedy. My first father-in-law used to say this when I was a kid, just in my early twenties. He also used to say that when the National Debt exceeds the Gross National Product the government will be bankrupt.
Well, the first part of what he said is so absolutely true that it is almost incontrovertible. But because I was an English teacher for more than thirty years and because I taught Forensics (Debate) for about eleven years and coached my high school debate team for that same amount of time, I won’t say it’s a fact. No matter how true it seems, it’s still an opinion. It was his opinion and it is my opinion, and the thing that frightens me most is that saying it is like pissing in the wind because no one wants to hear it and the words just seem to dissolve into nowhere.
The selfishness and greed is manifested by mostly everyone, but the rich and famous are the ones we see it in more regularly. So, for example, we rarely see those welfare, food stamps and Social Security recipients who the taxpayers are supporting as they drive around in their new Mercedes Benz automobiles which they can afford because they have no expenses and work off the books too. These people make more than many of us who support them and hide their money. They wear all brand name clothes and pay cash for everything so as not to leave a trail. Many of them register their cars in a relative’s name so as not have a trail there too.
Man is by nature selfish and greedy!
We see it in those beggars in the street too. Not all of them of course and that’s the problem. You can’t easily discern who the real needy are. If we could easily distinguish between the scammers and the needy, not only would we have plenty of money to help the needy, which everyone in America wants to do, but we could start trimming that National Debt which in and of itself is an obscenity.
But man is by nature selfish and greedy.
Now I know you’re not supposed to use the word man. I know there are some states where I could be arrested for using the wrong gender pronoun. Yes, arrested and either jailed or fined or both! (I also know that that is not a complete sentence.) It is precisely such ridiculousness in the hands of the selfish and greedy politicians that has brought us to the absurdity we see each and every day in America, the greatest country in existence today.
Rich and greedy? Start with the Clintons. They are the most obvious. Move along to the Whoopi Goldbergs and the other celebrities who said if Trump was elected they would leave the country. Why are they still here? They’re making lots and lots of money, not piddly money but real money to the tune of millions and millions, by selling their hatred and warped opinions while exemplifying perfectly the notion that man is by nature selfish and greedy. Move along to the Al Gores and DiCaprios, those epitomes of true conservation.
And on and on.
Nope. Man is by nature selfish and greedy. President Obama somehow increased our National Debt by ten trillion dollars in a mere eight years. For the life of me, I can’t see where the money went. Can you? I only know that if we don’t wrestle the power from the selfish, greedy politicians and if we continue down the path we are on, our selfishness and greed will be our demise.
FYI: Interest on the National Debt for Fiscal Year 2017 was 277 billion dollars. That’s more than half the total Defense Budget was. What has our reckless spending gotten us? What is it costing us?
Man is by nature selfish and greedy.
