The Daily Plunge

JERRY: What do we got?
GEORGE: An idea.
JERRY: What idea?
GEORGE: An idea for the show.
JERRY: I still don’t know what the idea is.
GEORGE: It’s about nothing.
JERRY: Right.
GEORGE: Everybody’s doing something, we’ll do nothing.
JERRY: So, we go into NBC, we tell them we’ve got an idea for a show about nothing.
GEORGE: Exactly.
JERRY: They say, “What’s your show about?” I say, “Nothing.”
GEORGE: There you go.
(A moment passes)
JERRY: (Nodding) I think you may have something there.

Seinfeld was, quite famously, a show about nothing. This past week’s Democratic National Convention was, less famously, a convention about nothing. The party’s nominee, Barack Obama, whined about politics as usual, the politics of the past, and so on and so forth, whilst painstakingly outlining a tired collectivist scheme that hasn’t changed since the New Deal. Talk about your politics of the past.

Mr. Obama dressed it up in some pretty words, talked about uniting the nation, and even promoted what you might call traditional American values. But these were merely smokescreens for the same old corrupt crony politics that have been the hallmark of the Democratic Party for years. And, yes, they have been the hallmark of the Republicans as of late, with their Democrat-like pork-barrel spending.

Let’s face it, most of our esteemed “representatives” are drunken sailors with unlimited shore leave, and we’re the harassed townspeople who have to clean up after them. And that’s the problem with Obama’s vision of America. It’s a vision in which the sailors are joined by marines, pirates, and a rogue’s gallery of scallywags bent on pillagin’ fer booty.

I’m sure he’s earnest enough about his beliefs; he probably actually believes that government has a responsibility to right every perceived wrong and injustice, and to eliminate inequalities. The primary problem with this philosophy is that it’s a pipe dream with damaging consequences when actually put into action (see also, Poverty, War On).

For instance, during his acceptance speech, Obama harped on providing a “world-class education” for our children. Unfortunately, the only thing this relentless drive “for the children” has accomplished is a cozy, tenured environment where the big winners are bureaucratic administrators and, yes… teachers. But “the children”? Though thousands of public dollars are spent on each pupil, an amount that rises precipitously each year, we have seen no progress.

But election cycle after election cycle we’re told that we need to pour more money into a broken, inefficient, and corrupt system, which is basically the definition of just about any big government program. Obama is merely repeating the mantra which began almost 100 years ago with the progressive, fascist ideas of John Dewey.

Rather than institute true change and reform in a system that most certainly and empirically needs it, such as vouchers and other variations of school choice, Obama holds fast to the tiring, statist line that “the children” currently floundering in a directionless, failing school system must stay in that system. While it may fail “the children”, it ensures job security for teachers and six-figure salaries for administrators, so I suppose someone is better off in the whole mess.

This is only one example of many, but what is perhaps most distressing is Obama’s characterization of America. While in one breath he rightly speaks of the promise and opportunity America offers, the tenor of his message, and the message of his party, is extremely negative.

Apparently, according to Obama, there are “cities to rebuild, farms to save.” Hmmmm. The last time I strolled through Denver I must have missed the smoldering ruins of this once proud city. But I suppose he was alluding to New Orleans, a city which has received literally hundreds of billions of dollars; that’s what passes for government “sitting on its hands” while the city “drowned”.
In the real world, it was local and state government that failed its citizens. Katrina has turned into a myth of epic proportions, one of many spun at the Democratic National Convention. This has been the Democratic Party’s trademark since the Vietnam era. You might say it’s the politics of the past, presented in a new package by a party eager to create a crisis so that government can grow larger to combat the mythical crisis.

In speech after speech I heard a lot about “change” at the Democratic National Convention, but saw zero evidence of it in their policies and approach to the issues of the day. What I heard was the sound of a bored, unhelpful government employee calling out the number 20, while I’m holding number 356 at the DMV. Democrats want every facet of my life to be like a day at the DMV, which will provide fresh Seinfeldian situations as we wait in line doing nothing waiting for non-existent service from a faceless bureaucracy. It will be absolutely hilarious!