OPINION:
If you live long enough, you hear the same promises and accusations repeated ad nauseam by politicians of both parties.
They will make your life better if you vote for them, they say. Yet is your life better because of a politician? I doubt it. Mine gets worse when they raise my taxes.
Democrats are recycling the canard of the filthy rich versus the average person who lives paycheck to paycheck. Question: When Democrats are in office and raise taxes, do you get any of their money?
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Dishonesty and corruption among members of both parties have always been a problem, extending back almost to the nation’s founding. Promises to restore character and honesty are made, but how do you instill those in someone who has neither?
Democrats are increasingly defaulting to their familiar political trinity of envy, greed and entitlement. You are supposed to envy your fellow Americans who make more money and live better than you do. Greed makes you want what they have and allows the government to take it away and give it to you.
“Thou shalt not covet,” says the 10th Commandment, but what politician or Democratic voter pays attention to that or to the other nine Commandments?
Then we have Democratic promises of “Medicare for All.” Do voters not realize that a single-payer healthcare system will reduce the quality of care, placing them on waiting lists for major procedures? Look no further than Canada and Britain, where it can take weeks to see a doctor and longer still to have surgery.
The British newspaper Daily Mail has reported extensively over the years about thousands of people who have died while waiting for medical procedures and in hospital hallways filled with beds because no patient rooms are available.
Delays in ambulance arrival are also part of the government healthcare story.
Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed told Bret Baier of Fox News that his “Medicare for All” platform would guarantee public health insurance for everyone while allowing individuals to keep private health insurance options. President Obama promised the same, but for many people, it has not worked out that way.
It is the annual open season for people to examine or change their Medicare plans. Many of the TV ads that promote supplemental insurance plans contain these words: deserve, free and entitled. When people believe they deserve something, they think it ought to be free, and they feel entitled to it. Politicians, especially Democrats, take advantage of this flaw in human nature.
I hate to beat a dead horse, but why are hardly any politicians talking about reducing the $40 trillion — and counting — debt? Visit usdebtclock.org and watch those spinning numbers as your head spins too. Politicians are afraid to mention the debt because it would mean making cuts and reforms, bringing the wrath of voters.
I am not in the habit of favorably quoting the late Democratic governor of Alabama, George Wallace, but when he was running for president as an independent in 1968, he said: “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two major parties.”
Party membership is declining, and the number of registered independents is growing. That too many people continue to put too much faith in politicians, and too little in themselves, brings to mind one of the most famous political lines ever written. Baltimore Sun columnist H.L. Mencken wrote, “No one in this world, so far as I know, has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”
We elect these people, so it is our fault if they fail to solve problems.
If you prefer a more updated version than Mencken’s, how about this one from Forrest Gump? “Stupid is as stupid does.”
• Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com. Look for Cal Thomas’ latest book, “A Watchman in the Night: What I’ve Seen Over 50 Years Reporting on America” (Humanix Books).
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