Truth, Justice, and Instant Gratification

Americans are the Veruca Salt of the world.  Veruca Salt was the horrid, spoiled little girl in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who got whatever she wanted and usually immedately.  Americans are no different.  Why are there so many different kinds of diets?  Why is plastic surgery so popular?  How do otherwise intelligent people fall for all manner of “get rich quick” schemes?  Because Americans want what they want and they want it immediately.

The healthy way to lose weight is to eat less and exercise more.  Simple enough.  But it takes a long time, work and patience.  It took a long time to put the weight on, so logically it will take a long time to take it off.  Americans will try anything to shorten this process.  There has to be a magic pill out there somewhere that we can wake up one morning as thin as we want to be.  We have no patience.

TV shows come and go, sometimes vanishing before they have a chance to build an audience.  Because there’s always something else; something that looks brighter and shinier.  So shows move around the schedule and eventually disappear, but nobody notices because nobody really has the patience to stick with something, and the networks know that.

Politically, the economy did not suddenly become horrible.  We didn’t wake up one morning in 2007 or so and all of the jobs were gone along with our savings.  There was a budget surplus in 2000 when President Clinton left office.  So logically, it took America eight years to get into this mess.  But being Americans, we expected that all we had to do in 2008 was vote for the right guy and all of our problems would be solved.

The right guy has worked hard over the past four years, but of course being Americans, we just can’t understand why our problems are still here.  Didn’t he fix that yet?  Why not?

President Obama is not a magic pill.  We are not going to wake up one day and suddenly have a glorious new economy and jobs for everyone.  It took eight years to get into this mess and it’s going to take time and work to pull out of it.    Eat less and exercise more.  Support the guy who’s been making steady progress as opposed to the new guy who showed up offering another version of snake oil; another get-rich quick scheme, another fall schedule.  We need to stick with what we have for once and have the patience to see it through to the end.  America will be a better place for it.