The Future's Eyes, What They'll Hold

It was tough to come home from my run last night, and not sit down to write about thousands of things. Of course, looking at the post I put up, just before I went to bed, we could probably see this coming.

First, I respect Libertarianism, but where were all of the “Conservatives” these past eight years? Not doing anything about this credit crisis will amount to a global recession. Let’s not do that team! I’ve seen Ron Paul’s berating Bernanke, but sorry Congressman, you’re missing the point. I don’t see one economist amongst your crowd speaking against our government’s attempt to salvage credit. No, it’s hindsight twenty-twenty Libertarians who didn’t do a damn thing to stop or block six years of Republican economic policy domination, from 2000-2006, which put us in this mess.

As I type that I think to myself how these past eight years will be looked upon in history books. For one, we didn’t learn from the gas crisis of the 1970’s. Detroit and American drivers returned to buying expensive gas-guzzling cars, which became the status quo.

I recall writing emails, back when I lived in Memphis—with nearly everyone driving SUVs, how immature and short-sighted that choice of auto was. As a revolt, while in Memphis, I bought a Subaru. I look back at twenty-two year-old Matt with a smile, and find myself grateful for the indignation.

Okay, I digress. We have historians looking back at our less-than-thirty years’ repeat of one set of mistakes. What’s the next set of mistakes? Is it similar to cheap credit and loose monetary policy of other decades, e.g. the 1920’s? Hmmm… While in our history books we see pictures of flappers and J. Gatsby, we know that it was people continuously living above their means.

I wonder if fifty-to-one-hundred years from now people will look back on people taking out loans for homes they couldn’t afford and cars they couldn’t afford, thinking, “What were those people thinking? It’s not as though they were the first people on Earth to live above and beyond their means, but how did they get so caught up in doing so? My goodness, what a bunch of idiots they were!”

Take that same classroom of juniors in their high school’s American History class, and then throw in the Iraq war. “Wait, wait, wait, we invaded Iraq under the guise of “WMD,” and they didn’t have any? The White House knew of this, and helped fabricate additional ‘intelligence’ to aid their case with the US and the World? How they were not impeached, and how we did not get out of the Middle East sooner, just baffles me! Especially considering the President before was impeached for, what, hooking up with an intern?!

I would love to hear someone else’s interpretation of how the future will look back on the seven-and-a-half years preceding this post. It’s a shame we were so easily duped.