The Swamp Can’t Be Drained, But It Can Be Changed
Dear America,
We’ve got a problem in our country and it’s everyone fault.
Right now, our government is a large, overbuilt RV that looks like a cross between a beer truck, a Pontiac Aztek and a porta potty. For years we have elected people to build up our government vehicle as it drove down our superior interstate highway system. It started as a sleek model T that was the envy of the world, now we’ve built something even a SPAC wouldn’t buy. We’ve had great mechanics add in a turbo charger here, and an A/C there, while others put sugar in the gas tank, most just smiled politely while others got up on our bumper and flipped us off. Recently, the great mechanics have decided to work on personal projects, while our current elected officials jumped on board fighting for a window seat to take the best selfie, meanwhile cross winds have pushed us off the road with a flat tire and a smoking engine.
Today, politicians tend to argue about what color the paint is on this monstrosity and which party has the right to paint it. A brave few people have gotten out the jack to fix the tire, but the crushing weight of the passengers screaming out the windows has made their efforts ineffective. It would be nice if these party puppets could stop yelling at each other from across the isle long enough to notice that others are coming up fast on the road. China is rolling down the freeway in a military tank, flanked by MRAPS that are synced up through a Huawei router recording everyone’s conversations. A few lengths behind them New Zealand is driving a nice little Volkswagon Bug jamming classic rock and the Nordic countries are driving sensible Volvos in a straight line using clean energy. Even Russia managed to rip off their rusted panels, fix their flats and get their tuned-up Honda CRV back on the road powered by nothing more than a hacker’s WIFI signal from Siberia. Most surprisingly, Estonia is zipping around on an electric bike and laughing at the poor American behemoth that can’t figure it out.
We as Americans are never going to agree on sports car vs truck, red vs blue paint, or what radio station to listen to, but the one thing we all know, is that our RV is broken and the people trying to fix it are not doing a good job. I’m writing these letters not to fix all the different parts of the car, especially those bumper stickers or paint colors everyone wants to fight about all the time, I just want to provide some commonsense ideas to get us back on the road.
Let’s change the conversation from arguing about the ideology of painting the RV red or blue, having a truck bed or a hatchback. Those topics don’t interest me and arguing about them will never move us forward, it only pushes us more apart. It’s an endless conversation, like is a hot dog a sandwich, of course it is, and if you don’t agree you’re an idiot that should be deported! Let’s bring back commonsense to the conversation and modernize our government so whatever the paint color is, we’ll at least be driving forward. While our people, companies, and the rest of the world is moving forward, our government is ineffective: our unemployment software is based on code from the 1950s, it takes 6 months to get a passport, the post office losses billions annually, there has been $100+ billion of COVID relief fraud, our government workers are incentive to waste money (our taxes) and not provide a great service to us. If government is going to solve any problems, it has to be capable of basic operations and the 2 party political machine has only allowed everything to decay for the last 15 years.
I’m proposing to clean up the fuel for vehicle (taxes) so it is easily extractable, understood and everyone pays their fair share. There are thousands of brilliant people in the US dedicating their lives to understanding, and in some cases exploiting, the tax code. The current US tax code is over 70,000 pages long and we spend over $10 billion a year on filing our taxes. It takes an average of 20 hours to complete our personal tax filings vs 15 minutes in Japan and the Netherlands or 2 mins in Estonia (very nice electric bike BTW). Yet we still don’t have a fair tax system, even billionaires are asking to be taxed more. So, let’s drain out the sludge in our fuel tank, drop in some premium fuel that burns clean and let’s rev up the engine.
How can we help our people when it’s a debate on who we really are? We need to get a real time inventory of who’s in the RV, how much we weigh and make sure anyone making parts, taking food orders or loading up a road trip playlist, understands who we are, what we need and is transparent about our relationship. We’ve got people who are hanging on the back for a free ride, others trying to get tickets punched at the door and no one knows who is supposed to be on the ride or not. Sure every 10 years the conductor comes around to ask some basic questions, then the donkeys and elephants take what we’ve learned to exploit things for the next 10 years. So, we’ve got people spreading out across 2 seats claiming their dead aunt is in bathroom, head counts being taken from the front by show of hands, and everyone arguing that it stinks inside because someone else hasn’t showered in days. All of this could be solved with basic modern technology that India and Estonia have implemented in the last 5 years. Ultimately, what it comes down to is that if you want to be in this country, you need a proper ticket and you have to play by the rules of the road: chip in on gas money, have a proper ticket, and no #2’s in the bathroom, the fan broke back in ‘83.
Now that we’re focused on driving forward again, we’ve got fuel in the tank, all ticketed passengers are accounted for, and freeloaders have been removed, we can fix the basic fundamentals of our once sweet ride. Not sure why we have 13 tires on this rig, other than instead of upgrading and fixing the original set, we just added more tires over time. Same goes for the extra power steering column and 6 turn signals that are now blowing fuses left and right. This beast of a machine can’t control everything and serve every single small need, it needs to be tuned for the overwhelming majority of the country and those that can’t drive themselves. There are over 50 government agencies, 450+ departments and 4 million employees (2 million excluding defense). I’m all for jobs and services to help Americans, except, despite these 450+ departments there are nearly 40 million people living below the poverty line, our military troops lack basic personal equipment and it takes me 6 months to get a passport. Let’s upgrade the tech, clean up the excess, scuttle the wave runner trailer, and get this RV clocking a respectable MPG as it drives down the open road.
Sure, this country isn’t perfect, but it’s still the greatest country in the world, in my opinion, but if we can’t clean up our government by bringing common sense back to the discussion and basic mechanical operations restored to working condition, we are in major trouble. Our troops will have defended nothing, our kids will be worse off than we are, and we’ll just be arguing about where the chairs should go on this sinking titanic RV. We have been the most dynamic and successful country for the last 150 years, we should all strive to make it another 150 years for team USA!
More Liberty Letters will be published that detail the commonsense ideas to get our ride back on the open road and ahead of the pack in the days to come.
Sincerely,
The Middle American
