Understanding Change

It’s all just a matter of understanding……or is it?

I have been told on more than one occasion that the reason I am so firm in my conservative beliefs is that I just don’t understand. If I would merely approach things with an open mind I would see the sense in what I currently view as senseless and understand that which now leaves me scratching my head.

I freely admit that there are certainly more things on this planet that I do not understand than things I do. Many of them I enjoy in my daily life without much consternation as to the how and why. For instance, I don’t know how they get a movie onto a DVD or how the player reads it and puts the picture on my TV, or how computer code flies through the air and allows my computer to hook into the World Wide Web without wires, which is not surprising seeing as I didn’t understand how it did it with the wires and that crazy beeping noise either. Even mundane issues like how they get the toilet paper so neatly onto the roll escape me. But my lack of understanding of those and countless other subjects do not keep me awake at night.

There are however, some issues that do.

I don’t understand how only those who get their hands dirty are considered to have worked for a living. Or, according to the Obama administration, how union members are entitled to be given ownership shares of the automaker they work for, with no financial investment and a bank president who has worked the entire year, through the toughest conditions since the 1940’s, is informed that he is entitled to nothing at all for 2009.

I don’t understand how those who found, own or run a business are viewed as just lucky and worthy targets of intensified government scrutiny and penalization through increased taxation, while those who work for them, who have a job solely because somebody else worked to create the business, are somehow victims.

I don’t understand how a Commander in Chief could be so concerned about the rights of our sworn enemies that he signed a decree closing the Guantanamo Bay Detention facility within days of taking office without a clue as to what would be done with the detainees, but when it comes to reinforcing our military people already on the battlefield in Afghanistan it takes weeks and possibly months of politically focused meetings for him to make a decision. This even after his handpicked advisor laid out the military strategies for him and the ramifications of inaction.

I don’t understand how we can spend our way out of debt or how sending senior citizen’s checks for $250 when the cost of living went down is fair to those who will eventually have to foot the bill.

I don’t understand how it could be a good idea to legalize marijuana but yet it remains a criminal offense to sell food cooked in trans fats. Am I to believe that the carcinogenic smoke and mind altering THC in pot is less dangerous than a McDonald’s French fry?

I don’t understand how we continue to claim the need for new oppressive taxes in every conceivable area to institute economic recovery when Asia is leading the world’s economies in recovery with 9% annual growth, without doing the same.

I don’t understand how increasing health insurance costs or burying healthcare providers under reams of government paperwork while reducing their payments will improve healthcare. Nor do I understand how we will get a handle on unrealistic malpractice settlements by removing them from the court system but creating government installed panels in their place.

As I said, I freely admit that there are many things I don’t understand. But I fear that in order for me to understand these illustrations and many more like it from the Obama administration I would have to adapt the Jack Nicholson line from “As Good As It Gets”.

First I think like I do now, then I take away all reason and accountability.