Blood in the streets?

"Are we now on a slippery slope where the war of words will devolve into just a war? Are we that far apart right now there is no coming back?" 

I was at an event this past week when a friend of mine (out of the blue) gave this dire warning. "The way things are going in this country, I fear within ten years there will be blood running in the streets." And he was not talking about armed conflict with another invading country. He was talking about civil war. State against state, neighbor against neighbor, brother against sister.

On that happy note, I started to wonder - was this just hyperbole, or was my friend onto something? Are we now on a slippery slope where the war of words will devolve into just a war? Are we that far apart right now where there is no coming back? 

My belief is very simple. If every citizen followed our Constitution as written, rather than how we wished it had been written, we would only have a fraction of our current disrespectful discourse. I believe that to be an immutable fact. For example, no place in our founding documents does it guarantee all will have equal outcome - only equal opportunity. And yet the Democratic Party has made class envy a cottage industry and a staple of their party. And as of late, that envy has boiled over into something ugly.

Obama has said the biggest threat we face is "climate change". Bigger than terrorism, bigger than the treats from Iran or the Norks, bigger than anything. I have a different take. If you think our national discourse is strained right now, just wait until the debt bomb goes off. Yes, it is that serious. With our debt now approaching $20T, it is set to really skyrocket in the next few years. Soon the debt will eclipse everything else, and our economy will be worse off than it was in the 1930's.

Even though things are currently turbulent, this could be the calm before the storm. We need both major parties to suddenly become truth tellers instead of fable weavers. We need to stop putting lipstick on the pig - rather put the pig on a diet.

We need to spend our money much wiser. We need to STOP with the current path of the entitlement programs. Instead of fixing the gaping holes in Social Security and Medicare, we instead add ObamaCare. My state wants to build trains which will have huge operating costs, and many don't give a rat's butt they will ever be sustainable. This is just plain nuts!

Any economist with a shred of honestly will tell you the same thing. Our unsustainable debt will eventually cause a market crash. And it will be huge - much bigger than the Great Depression. When that happens, all hell could break loose in the streets. Everyone will be blaming everyone else when in reality, we would all be guilty of causing it. 

Is it too late? Are my friend's words prophetic? I hope not. I do know this much however - we are running out of time. Speaking of time - it is time for truth telling. By everyone. Identify the problem, identify the fix to the problem, and tell everyone "take their medicine." 

We got into this mess as a nation, and we need to get out of this mess as a nation. Failure to do so might signal the end to a once great Republic.