A New Hope

No, this isn’t another JVH Star Wars reference. It’s just that over the past three years we have been beaten down so much with high prices, world events, a non responsive government, vacuous leadership at all levels. It makes it difficult to find reasons to go on.

When the government openly admits that high fuel prices and the resulting inflation and high prices in virtually all consumer goods is by design and then does nothing to stop it, how does one justify getting up in the morning. Our betters (sorry Tony) tell us that we need this pain for long term gain but our intellect tells us that is absurd. That all this is designed to get us to buy electric cars, take public transportation, or walk. As if suddenly the electric grid will triple in capacity and the winds will blow consistently and the sun will shine and all will be right with the world.

Let’s face it, central planning and control has failed in every sense of the word wherever it has been tried (can you say Venezuela). When the marketplace has been allowed to work, innovation has succeeded (can you say Elon Musk).

Our leaders simply say that even though this or that plan hasn’t worked before, it will work now because they are smarter than their predecessors and this tweak or that will make it work. They fly in the face of four thousand years of history. Their lack of a classical education has put them in a position of attempting to fix problems that don’t exist with plans that have failed time and again.

So in the face of all this, why should we have hope.

Because the political pendulum always swings back. Most recently, it was the Carter Administration. Remember runaway inflation, high gas prices, gas rationing, the disasters in Iran. Things turned around quickly after that administration was out of office. The electorate, the same one what put Carter into office, tossed him out and things began to look better. The same will happen again.

P T Barnum was incorrect in one thing. You can’t fool all the people all the time.  People vote their best interest. In this case they will do so. It will take a bit longer to turn around this time as we seem to have gotten ourselves in deep, but turn around it will. We have no choice.

A few years from now we will look back on this era and shake our heads. Unfortunately, a few decades later, we will forget what we learned, and do it all over again. It’s simply how it works.

So don’t give up hope. We will survive in spite of ourselves. We are a resilient people and that cannot be taken away.

JVH