It has been true throughout the course of human history that there is money to be made by staying on the good side of those with power. Whether we are talking about land grants to loyal barons, patronage for court composers, or today’s web of oddly unaccountable spending designed to promote social justice, green energy, and tolerance throughout our nation, mouthing the loyal words of support and singing the approved tune has always paid off.
It matters not whether one is loyal to terrible leaders, praising abject stupidity and immorality, or pursuing a vision of utopia that serves only to divide a nation, the cash will always rain down on those who kiss up.
Speaking as someone who spent many years working in both business, where I learned that measurable results were all that mattered, and education, where the prevailing ideology is that expecting measurable results is a form of bigotry, I find the tsunami of money flooding into programs that provide fat salaries for those who produce little but dismal reports that serve to excuse poor outcomes, conceal their failures—and blame Americans for their lack of both Woke enlightenment and groveling gratitude—to be a clear sign of just how far off track our nation truly is. Despite the long decades of spending many trillions of dollars to “improve” America, we have perhaps never been so impoverished, miserable, and afraid. Most everything we need is becoming more unaffordable, our nation’s overall mental health is at a crisis point, and both the threat of crime and the specter of war are hovering over us like a dark and forbidding cloud.
All that money was well spent, right?
A recent meta-analysis of 304 polls that asked the same question—“Is our nation on the right track or the wrong track?”—found an astounding 66.2% believe America is pursuing policies and espousing values that put us at grave risk. Apparently there is not nearly enough legal weed, online sports betting, and streaming porn available to ease our frustrations and fears, and the upward arc of our credit card debt speaks to a nation that is frantically paddling—yet falling behind.
It is little wonder that Congress is today laying the legal groundwork for a return to the military draft. Fewer and fewer young people seem interested in laying their lives on the line for a country and government that prefers to reward the wicked and punish the good.
Our tattered faith in the good intentions of our leaders has been frayed to the last thin thread by the many pernicious lies of the Covid-19 insanity, the 2020 summer of riots that resulted in few arrests and convictions, the resolute refusal of unelected bureaucrats and self-appointed experts to admit their many destructive mistakes, the unending government handouts that reward the foolish and indolent while spitting in the eyes of those who play by the rules and work hard, the corruption of our criminal justice system by prosecutors and judges pursuing a political agenda that forgives felons for doing us harm, and the willful surrender of our nation’s borders, which has trashed our cities and communities while diverting scarce resources to so-called “newcomers”, who are, in fact, all criminals who are being richly rewarded for breaking federal immigration laws that the Biden administration finds it annoying to enforce. It is a long list, to be sure, and it only grows longer and more distressing with each passing day that we go further into unsustainable debt to fund fantasies that supposedly better our nation in a manner that has driven sales of anti-depressants to new records and robbed Americans of any remaining optimism regarding our nation’s future.
One can only wonder about that 26% who, according that same poll of polls, believe America is absolutely on the right track; their complacency is a puzzle, but perhaps it is simply a matter of whether our country’s self-created problems are putting money in their pockets.
When one looks at economic sectors where liberals today predominate—education, Big Tech, social services, and government at all levels—it can perhaps be said that a belief in the efficacy and importance of milking taxpayers for every possible penny, silencing unbelievers, and refusing to provide provable results is a matter of enlightened self-interest because reductions in today’s out-of-control local, state, and federal spending would reduce their income and push them into less lucrative jobs.
What works in America today is parking oneself under one of the many gushers of government cash. It matters not whether money is spent in a way that provides a demonstrable benefit because the paychecks for bureaucrats, educators, and contractors—with the additional comeback of campaign contributions to the elected officials who engineered their money drop—serves the purposes of everyone except the beleaguered taxpayers who are expected to pay the bills. After you figure this out, suddenly the many disasters now afflicting our nation and people make a lot more sense.
You can’t be a DEI bureaucrat pulling down a quarter million dollars a year, a school superintendent in a failing school district banking a cool half million, a college president on a campus where stultifying intellectual conformity is enforced (and heretics punished) while you bank near to a million dollars, a contractor snagging grants to promote abject censorship and outright propaganda, a social worker booking hotel rooms for illegal immigrants, or a smug scammer getting rich running a company building electric cars few Americans want to purchase without a self-reinforcing intellectual infrastructure that cheers for the many financial failures that supposedly protect us, routinely demean us, and certainly mislead us.
Keep all of this in mind the next time you run into someone who assures you that Joe Biden and his minions are doing a great job. Ask what they do for a living, find out what they are paid, and ask yourself whether their opinion might be just a tad skewed by their desire to continue making a living—on the backs of America’s taxpayers.
Remember that it matters little to them whether the trillions upon trillions of dollars of government spending enriching them works or not to solve one of the many disasters that affect Americans today.
That money fulfills a purpose that warms the hearts of liberals: It provides lots of lovely no-strings-attached paychecks that keep on coming—regardless of the damage done.