George Washington, The Father of Our Country, was born on this day in 1732. And if old George came back today, he'd flip his powdered wig. He would find a government so out of control he might have been wondering why he and the boys didn't just hand the keys to the nation back to that other George, the King of England. Not sure if anyone back in Washington's time were even familiar with the concept of trillions of dollars, but if they could sink their wooden teeth into the concept they'd be appalled. 281 years of inflation is one thing, but a debt of dollars, which, if spread out would carpet the entire land mass of Florida, Delaware, and Rhode Island. Or if you're more of a vertical thinker, would stretch up from Mother Earth, to Mars and back and would probably have enough bills with George's mug on the front to make another galactic round trip. And if George did come back to see this high tech, high debt mess of a nation that’s ensued, how long would it be before some environmental cops scolded him - cutting down a tree without an environmental impact statement, attempting to pollute the delicate oyster beds and ecosystems of the Atlantic seaboard by throwing a coin across the Potomac?
George would be ashamed to learn it took this great nation two hundred years to get one trillion dollars into debt, and now goes a trillion more into the red every ten months or so. And he might listen and watch incredulously as the 43rd occupant of the Highest Office in the land bullies congress for daring to cut off the national credit line.
If he asked me how we got in this mess I'd school him on our two long running problems; Greed and Do-Gooders. We speculate ourselves into recessions and depressions and then try and make all of the Americans created equal a little more equal by throwing government goodies at them. The very word entitlement would be poison to George who believed hard work equaled success, not a direct deposit from Washington. How shocked would he be to learn half of all Americans are on some sort of federal or state dole and that entitlement payouts have jumped 100 fold in 50 years? He would not be keeping up with the Kardashians but might reach for the moonshine when he learned people playing children’s games or pretending to be someone else as the cameras roll would earn millions of dollars. He would hate politicians who make laws for the rest of us and then exempt ourselves. No I think George would head back to the hereafter loaded for bear looking for the ghosts of FDR, Woodrow Wilson, and the rest of his successors who enacted what seemed like good ideas at the time which we'll be paying for, for generations to come.
