Will Biden's actions lead society down the road to bondage?

Alexander Tytler (1747-1813) was a Scottish historian best known for describing a cycle that societies go through, called the Tytler cycle. He wrote that societies go through the same cycle again and again, and that the cycle lasts roughly 200 years. The cycle begins with a society in bondage, then spiritual faith, great courage, liberty, abundance, complacency, apathy, dependence, and back to bondage. Tytler also wrote that all republics and democracies are doomed to fail, because politicians entrusted to oversee and implement the laws are men, with all the failings that entails.

So … bummer. I feel lucky to have grown up when I did, and lucky in a perverse way that I will not be around for the bondage phase. Or maybe I will. President Biden (actually his handlers; he’s a marionette) did not initiate the dependence phase, which began in earnest in the 1960s and has since picked up speed, but he/she/it has fully embraced it, showering printed money on anything that moves, or doesn't move. This is not sustainable.

Comedian George Carlin once announced that scientists had discovered a new number called Bleen, located between six and seven. If we start using Bleen, perhaps the debt and deficit will disappear. Wait, more integers chasing fewer goods is probably inflationary. How about bit-coin? The metric system? The Dewey Decimal System? I don’t know. I’m an old two-plus-two-equals-four relic, destined to end up in a museum next to an abacus.

History repeats itself until it doesn't, so the bondage phase is not preordained — there’s always a first time for everything. But the chances of stopping this freight train, let alone reversing it, are slim and none and slim left town. It would be one thing if the Biden administration was simply well-meaning but incompetent, but this looks intentional.

DAVE MUNDELL

Sandpoint