08 August 2015

Nothing is More Dangerous than Bored Americans

There is a price we pay for living in an information age. With access to unlimited music, movies, tweets, essays, cat videos, and opinions, nobody wants to be bored. Americans will go to great lengths to avoid boredom. They will, for instance, elect bombastic fools to office just to mix things up.

We are coming up to 5 years of uninterrupted job creation. It's been 58 straight months of positive job numbers. The country has never had such a long streak of positive numbers. Nobody even talks about this any more. It elicits a yawn. The second longest streak was 48 months, a 4 year streak that concluded in 1990. We're about to pass that by a full year and still no one comments about this. It's boring. The same thing, month after month. "The American economy created jobs. Yada yada, yada."

What did Americans do last time the American economy performed spectacularly, in the late 1990s? Hired a really nice, but not particularly bright fellow to sit in the Oval Office.

What are Americans doing now that the economy has finally recovered from his spectacularly failed management? Now that the unemployment rate is finally close to healthy? It turns its attention to Donald Trump, a man who makes no apology for being sexist, dishonest, selfish, and offensive. Oh, and having no clue about effective policies.

It's easy to believe that President Donald would spice things up. Not just by saying stupid things but by starting wars and crashing the economy. It would be miserable, resulting in the death of noble soldiers and innocent civilians, the financial ruin of good Americans and confused foreigners ... but at least we won't be bored. And that's really all that matters.

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