Lurching Forward

Sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Take, for example, the wisdom a friend of mine laid on me about lemmings. That part about them rushing forward to their little furry deaths? Not true. Which pretty much closed out my central metaphor about the Fiscal Cliff which we find ourselves speeding toward like Thelma and Louise. Thank you Callie Khouri. Now that the election is over, we have the ugly realities that we have been spinning into attack ads to fix.
How are we going to pay for all of this stuff? Sure, the two billion dollars that was spent on those attack ads might be nice to have back, but maybe that was just the leading edge of our eventual economic recovery. Or maybe instead of spending all that time hanging out in Ohio, all those clever government types could have worked a few more hours on a fiscal plan to avoid the fiscal catastrophe that is shaped like a fiscal cliff. Raise taxes. Cut spending. Print more money. A switch to the silver standard. Another movie that springs to mind is "Dave," wherein Kevin Kline takes the place of the President when the chief executive slips into a coma after a vigorous night with his mistress. While carrying on as his lookalike, Dave uses his man-of-the-people knowledge to balance the budget and get America working again. I wonder how many times Mitt Romney watched that one.
Meanwhile, back in Washington D.C., the opportunity to be smug is short-lived, since now that the confetti has been swept up and the flags have been removed from volunteer's hair, it's back to work. The House of Representatives is dominated by Republicans. The Senate is in the hands of the Democrats. There's a month and a half until we plummet into the abyss. And I don't mean the James Cameron film.
Of course, we might all get lucky, and the words of our President on election night about coming together, not as red states or blue states, but as on America will finally ring true and we can begin building on a foundation of cooperation and trust. Or maybe the Mayans were right and we can just relax and enjoy the next few weeks.