Author: bfaure

Posted on

Capturing the Spark of Life

    

      Unlike film,  portrait painting and painting in general, must create an emotional reaction from the viewer perceiving a single fused projection of a moment in time.  Its necessary immobility creates a vague sense of passiveness as the emotions created do not build  into complex directions that create tension with the original impulse.  It is the great painter that creates tension in the viewer, the desire to know more of the subject, to want to know what happened to the subject before and after  the fixed moment in time.   It is the great painter that succeeds in injecting the spark of life into the inanimate canvas and layers of paint that make the viewer feel more than see the painting.  John Singer Sargent was that kind of  painter.

      John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was an anachronism.  He was an American painter through and through , but was born in Italy and spent the better part of his working life in Paris and London.  David McCullough’s excellent new book The Greater Journey : Americans in Paris relates the story of many American artists who came to Paris in the 19th century to hone their craft or become recognized as “trained” by the French school of artists when they returned home. John Singer Sargent was different in that he did not discover Paris; Paris discovered him. From his first classes with eminent French portrait painter Carolus-Duran, it was clear this teenager was a throwback to the greats, in that he had an epic talent that needed only to be unsheathed, not developed. He burst upon the public consciousness with a portrait of his teacher Carolus that was not a likeness, but instead a capture of a soul of the painter. Carolus is staring directly at the viewer, intense and confident, his body at a jaunty angle, his clothes modern and dandyish, a contained flamboyance of an artist. The hands are languid and flexible and speak to their occupation. Most dramatic are the signature Sargent creation, the eyes. The eyes have what time and time again would project from a Sargent portrait, the radiating energy of a living being, not a memory. This powerful Sargent characteristic was an irresistible draw for wealthy and powerful individuals who wished to be preserved through time with their youth, beauty, and power intact, and Sargent gave them their wish as no other artist of his time.
A particularly favorite portrait of mine, and there are so many, was Singer Sargent’s 1893 portrait of Lady Agnew of Lochnaw. The colors are cool and restrained, as befits a British lady of the Victorian era. She is relaxed, refined, assured of her place and time, and closed to the momentary emotional impulses that would effect a woman of lesser stature. But Sargent as he did time and time again let the viewer know she is all woman, fully aware of her beauty and her effect on those who would gaze upon her. Again Sargent brings the eyes to bear – a cool blue grey that dares you to look away, and know you can not. Once again, though rigidly positioned in the clothes and culture of her time, she is as alive as a breathing being that could easily walk out of the painting and across the room, if she so desired.
This intense realism was in juxtaposition to the trends of of painting in the late 19th century that became dominant and “modern”, the winning out of tone and color known as Impressionism, over true reproduction. But Sargent wasn’t about the immediate truth of a subject, more of the eternal truth that reflected more of their soul and life force. It is seen again in his visions of the powerful – take the portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt. In Sargent’s view, Roosevelt is every bit the world statesman, but Roosevelt’s nervous, inextinguishable energy shines through. He is a coiled spring and at the height of his personal physicality and power.  His confident hand rests on the stairwell, but it might as well as well be the globe of the world given his posture.  It was no wonder Sargent never struggled to find subjects for his portraits, as he never failed to pull out the most humanity from whatever unique source  they had to give.

     John Singer Sargent was no less gifted in a media that has never held the respect that magnificent oil paintings do, but can be equally complex and illuminating, that of the watercolor.  The media of watercolor requires a innate understanding of each color’s interaction and each color’s effect on the painting’s light as the process of watercolor painting is similar to plein-air oil in its immediacy, but also permanent and mistaken impressions irretrievable.  Sargent somehow manage to bring the same nervous tension to the watercolor that he did to the oil painting.  In the watercolor Bedouins, Sargent once again uses the eyes to fuel in both the male and female subjects their pride and vitality, despite the pastel nature of the color.  In the landscape Gondolier’s Siesta,Sargent inflects a dream-like state that brings motion to the water and impressive depth to the rough charactertures of the gondoliers.

     Over a lifetime of prodigious work, John Singer Sargent created over 900 oil paintings and over 2000 watercolors and has become an American giant in the world of art.  At the end of his life he seemed hopelessly old fashioned, tied more to Titian and Velazquez than Van Gogh and Picasso.  The school of Realism, denigrated for almost a hundred years as art turned to more and more abstract interpretations of the world in which we live, has seen a comeback of late and an increased respect for the creativity and talent required to open the human eye to more complexity than its already complex view of the world records.  John Singer Sargent was a realist but recognized that people at their core were a special form of energy, that held all of life’s pain and exuberance, introspection and vitality, in equal measure.  Sargent was recorder of the Spark of Life, and will provide for anyone who gazes upon his masterpieces far flung across the world,  a small surge of understanding of what it means to be human, and to have lived life to its fullest.

Posted on

After America


The greatest short essayist in my lifetime comes out with another book on August 8, 2011 that is bound to be a blockbuster in sales and penetrating thought. Mark Steyn, an international columnist and thought provocateur previously identified as Ramparts People We Should Know #3 has made a career over the last two decades writing thousands of insightful essays on culture, entertainment, government, religion, liberties, and western ideals that are prodigious in number and unrivaled in clever phrasing, analysis, and introspection. Readers of National Review, Macleans, the Jerusalem Post, Atlantic Monthly and Orange County Register among others have had the constant pleasure of reading sentences and paragraphs from this terrific writer that express clarity, satire, punch, intelligence and comedy in equal measure.
Now 51 years old, Steyn has been an enfant terrible for decades, skewering the pompous, self-important, and dictatorial, eloquently speaking up for freedom of speech and personal liberties. His take no prisoners approach to writing has led to direct confrontation with political correctness and governmental censorship and has made him a hero to millions and a threat those who demand a righteous view of culture and events.

In 2008, Steyn wrote the international best seller America Alonein which he identified the deterioration in European cultural identity, collapsing judeo-christian values, and declining native birthrates, challenged by burgeoning  islamic immigrant populations and the unwillingness of those immigrants to assimilate into a western cultural identity. He noted the unique position of America as a country that still had a muscular economy based on entrepeneurism, a constitution preserving personal freedom, and a healthy birthrate of individuals that shared the goals of freedom and economic independence. His fear expressed in the book was that the loss of European cultural identity would leave America dangerously isolated and at risk to succumbing to the progressive growth of reactionary societies and lack of shared history.

     A few years later, with the stunning acceptance by the American public  of bank and automobile company bailouts, a pathway to personal health servitude relying upon government whim, calamitous spending habits, and governmental acceptance of unfunded debt at inconceivable levels has left Steyn considerably more pessimistic about America’s survival and therefore the survival of the western ideal.  The speed at which this turnabout in America’s fortunes and her society’s desire to resist the ebbing of her position as the world leader in progress and freedom has been simply at the level of a freefall.  I would suggest readers of the Ramparts would consider Mr. Steyn’s new book After America required reading and hopefully a sufficient prophecy of warning to help us all stop those who would continue to send us hurdling over a cliff.   The video below, courtesy of the blog American Power, is extensive but captures Steyn’s passion and intellect on the Canadian television show Sources.  Enjoy the discourse. Buy the book. Expand your mind. Enjoy a great writer.

Posted on

A German Virtuoso That Knows the 3 B’s

     The silly little argument that underlies the cultural extension of music is that only a person born and immersed in the specific culture that forms the basis of a piece can truly emote the composer’s desired expression. In simple terms as Salieri was supposed to have said, ” a German writing Italian Opera? Preposterous!”  Obviously the argument that Lang Lang can not perform Liszt or Christopher Parkening can not perform Rodrigo as the music is best expressed is absurd.  Yet, intermittently a performer so owns the music canon of their birthplace that the audience wants no other interpretation to interfere with the marriage of culture, music, and performer.  Anne-Sophie Mutter, the beautiful and oh so talented  German violin virtuoso has been a premier interpretor of the German composer hall of famers, the three B’s – Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms – since her international debut at age 13, and if you add appropriately her Mozart performances, she has become the face of the face of German musical cultural expression.  And what a face it is.

     Anne-Sophie Mutter was born in the small German village of Rheinfelden, just up the Rhein river from Basel, Switzerland in 1963.  Her musical talent was apparent at a very early age and her magnetic stage presence soon after.  At age 13, she was “discovered” by Herbert Von Karajan and placed on the stage with the Berlin Philharmonic, performed at Salzberg at age 17 and has “owned” the german music literature ever since.  A technical virtuoso, she is also one of the most strikingly beautiful performers gracing the stage, and the marriage of the two has created an indelible image that this is how Brahms, Beethoven, Bach (and Mozart) should be performed, by a beautiful woman expressing to perfection the romantic motifs and musical lines of the German greats.

     Her music strengths are as arresting as her beauty – a perfect clarity of melodic line and pastoral  reflections that bring great humanity to the gruff german composers.   The sonatas of Brahms and Beethoven particularly come alive under her technique.  The gentle flow of the Rhein, the picturesque timeless villages, the ordered countryside and introspective emotions come to life with her bow and magnificient Stradivarius.  Though music remains a universal expression of man’s understanding of his life and soul, Anne-Sophie Mutter makes it just a little more clear, the great beauty and phenomenal contribution to western civilization, of the German soul.

 

Posted on

People We Should Know #16 – Marco Rubio

    

     I have tried to use this particular category People We Should Know for people we should know that aren’t really known, but are positively contributing to the culture, vitality and leadership of western civilization.  I haven’t considered Senator Marco Rubio of Florida for this discussion, not because he is not potentially an exceptional defender of the Ramparts, but because everybody has already considered him a pivotal figure.  I hate jumping on the bandwagon, when there are so many more articulate than I to define this person’s potential.  Well, I am over it.   Marco Rubio is so talented,  so capable of articulating a nation’s future, that avoiding the bandwagon affect is inappropriate for this blogsite.  Thus, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida as a premier defender of the Ramparts is #16 -People We Should Know, and know we must.

     Marco Rubio was born in 1971, making him only 40 years old, and already meteoric in his rise to national consciousness.  The son of Cuban exile immigrants from that island’s communist oppression, Rubio has been immersed from birth in the power of individual performance and achievement to fuel success in America.  A graduate of the University of Florida and a cum laude graduate of the school of law at the University of Miami, Rubio has taken to the American political stage like only a prodigy can.  Briefly serving as a city commissioner for West Miami, Rubio won at 29 a position as state representative with the Florida State Legislature, and by 2006 at only age 35 so convinced his caucus of his leadership skills that he was elected Speaker of the Florida House.  His rhetorical skills were felt to be once in a generation, and uniquely so, in both english and spanish. 

      Rubio determined in 2010 to run for the vacated U.S. Senate seat vacated by Mel Martinez, though it had essentially been assumed to be a “lock” for the sitting Republican Florida governor Charlie Crist.  Crist, a classic fence sitter philosophically, came out in favor of President Obama’s stimulus and Obamacare healthplan, and set himself up for clear debating points by his young primary challenger.  He learned what many will learn over time, it’s not a good idea to challenge Marco Rubio to  a debate of issues if you plan not to get overwhelmed.  A double digit deficit disappeared in a few months as Rubio ignored his lack of establishment support, money, and political organization to go directly to the people regarding Crist’s waxpaper thin “conservative” veneer, and articulate a comprehensive and positive conservative message, demolishing his opponent in the primary.  Crist, hurt by the upstart’s willingness to challenge his “coronation”, and convinced that the conservative base of the Republican party was too narrow to carry Rubio to victory against a “moderate” opponent, stunned his party by abdicating his party and running in the general election against Rubio as an independent.  Bad idea.  The shellacking Rubio put upon him in the general election was immense, and effectively ended Crist’s political career under any banner.

     Marco Rubio as candidate, nominee, and victor has been better than advertised and that’s saying alot.  A base conservative that appeals to the larger population on the strength of his spectacular rhetorical skills, reasonableness of approach, tact, and intelligence is marking a formidable position already in the U.S. Senate.  Senator Rubio has returned the Senate to the world of debate, requiring no teleprompter to articulate a cohesive vision, and understanding the power of words to clarify a position and win over the hesitant believer.  His future in politics knows no ceiling, and those who see him in action know it.  President Obama whose glibness has been proven to evolve from a moving transcript, knows how he looks when he rhetorically wrestles with young legislative lions like Rubio and Paul Ryan, has no desire to find himself like Charlie Crist, a supposedly unsinkable ship dashed on the rhetorical rocks of principle that these men articulate.  We are finally in the presence of some special people, who will not just talk a good game, but walk the walk, maybe saving this great country in the nick of time.

     Hot Air has linked a terrific video that encapsulates all the strengths of Senator Marco Rubio in a single impassioned speech before the Senate, regarding the process of dealing with the debt crisis.  Senator John Kerry decides to take him on, and learns the Crist lesson first hand.  Watch the whole video beginning to end, and wonder if this isn’t our next national leader.

Posted on

A Great Idea From 1935 Has Met Its Match

    

      A person born in 1935 would proudly be celebrating his or her 76th birthday this year and would be the first to admit a lot has changed since 1935. As much as it is fun to reminisce and have fondness for the earlier, simpler times, the distant year holds memories for very few alive today.  Most of the world of 1935 would be recognizable today but no one would want to rely on the best ideas of that year.  An icebox required – ice – to keep things cool. You could fly in an airplane, but no one except that crazy Lindbergh would really consider taking one across the Atlantic. A boat like the S.S. Normandie, France’s beautiful ship of passage was so much safer, and could cover the distance at an average 30 knots and in a mere 4.5 days.  Then there was the gorgeous 1935 Buick pictured above.  This magnificent car had a spectacular 8 cylinder engine that could produce 93 horsepower and navigate from 10  to 60 miles per hour in only 21 seconds. Yours for the absolute fortune of 935 dollars.  The number 1 Hollywood star was a little girl, Shirley Temple.   The world was at peace, though it did not know in one year, the turmoil in Spain would premise a dark age indeed. 

     Not everything was rosy.  Infectious disease was devastating without antibiotics.  Most of the United States was rural and wanted for essentials like available water or electricity, much less easy food or work.  The Crash of 1929 had deepened into a world wide depression, and a quarter of the population of the United States was chronically unemployed.  The average family income if you had work in 1935 was 474 dollars a year.  The average lifespan for a female 64 years, the male 59, in the high 40’s if you were African American.

     It was time for a great idea to protect the aged and infirm, the poor and the dispossessed. 1935 brought the culmination of the New Deal, the Social Security Act.

     Like the beautiful Buick of 1935, it was built for an earlier time, initiating a pay as you go fund to protect against old age poverty, once you reached the rare heights of 65 years of age.  The pittance of healthy aged that could make it to that olympus of birthdays did not worry where the money came from as there were many workers investing in the system for every retiree that would draw from it.  The economics of the Act were positioned for the 1950s , when the vast assembly of workers fashioned surpluses into the fund that seemed to go as far as the eye could see.  And so the act was expanded to take on groups that weren’t retirees, and eventually in 1965, health care considerations in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. 

     Then the economics of the Act began to get murky.  By 1980, the average lifespan had arisen to 74, and the number of workers to the number of retirees plummeted.  The adjustments were made to the cash flow by demanding higher tax contributions from both worker and employee, and still the economics staggered.  By 2007 the average female lived to 81, the male to 76.  The amounts paid out for this lifespan could not hope to be funded from the individual’s contributions, and the term unfunded liability became an  ominous new catchphrase.  Added to the inevitable mathematics of long life, the number of workers for the number of retirees plummeted, and the gross domestic product of the United States, so long in upward path, began to flatten. 

      Now we are told that the inevitable day when the funds coming in to Social Security will be exceeded by those going out, may come as soon as 2024, and Medicare Medicaid even sooner. Added to the stress is the average house hold income of 2007 -38,600 dollars, overwhelming any expected return from Social Security maximized in the mid twenties, placing substantial life quality contractures on the retiree who relied on Social Security alone.

     We have faced for sometime the inevitable collapse of a system designed for a 1935 life and a 1935 world.  Despite the spectacular changes in the past 76 years, we refuse to admit the law passed to provide security to a small minority for a long ago environment should continue without adjustment or modernization for the role we demand of it today.  We have changed the laws of the country to reflect our maturity in civil rights and equality for all.  We have changed our laws to prevent a President from serving over two terms and establishing a hegemony.  We have changed our laws to reflect the ability to travel cross country or trans ocean in the time it used to take in 1935 to cross town.  But we are stuck with the myth that the Social Security Act of 1935 put forth an eternal truth and a singular means of providing personal security. 

      Nice as it is to reminisce, we really can’t afford to live in 1935 much longer.  Today’s elected official fears the very thought of exposing the myth, but is progressively fearful of being responsible for the coming collapse.  The smart ones like Paul Ryan who are searching for a way out of the trap deserve our support. Hopefully a country where 1935 is a distant memory now for the very, very few,  can stop pretending that we were all there at the conception.

Posted on

The Slow Motion Train Wreck

   
The slow motion train wreck that was Amy Winehouse came to its inevitable conclusion with her reported death suspected from overdose in London at age 27 on July 23rd,2011.  She joins a notorious group of 27 year old modern recording artists that found the combination of overwhelming fame and fragile psyche too much to survive.  The brutal soup of music, nightlife, drugs and alcohol lies at the base of each tragic story and was no stranger to Amy Winehouse. 

     She came out of middle class mores from a jewish London family with a healthy exposure to jazz, Frank Sinatra, and 1960s soul and Motown performers that clashed with the rock trend youth culture of London.  Her family recognized very early in her life two countervailing traits, a soulful voice that hearkened back to the style of Aretha Franklin and Billy Holliday, and an incorrigible personality that led Amy to do whatever she wanted when she wanted.  Admitted to an artists school for advanced training she left early to seek her own way, and absorb any direction not associated with her parents.  She had an obvious gift to all that listened however, and in a music world of lip synched performances and musical conformity, her throw back style and prodigious voice stood out.  At age 19, her album Frank created a huge buzz and at 23 her followup Back To Black became a multi- Grammy award winning album and an international best seller.  She was identified as talent on par with the greats, and world wide adulation and concert dates awaited.

     No one bothered to see if Amy Winehouse was up to the pressure, and nothing in her personality suggested she was.  She performed at various times late, smashed, high, incoherent and rambling and with each successive year more obviously out of control.  Its difficult to identify a single performance where she wasn’t under the influence of mind altering agents, and the performance on the video below is no exception.  Her mother upon hearing of her death, stated “her death was only a matter of time”.  The complete absense of impulse control proved impossible for anyone in her family to intervene, and the progression from alcohol to heroin to crack cocaine to methylamphetamines proved, as it does in any case, a train wreck fullly predictable the moment it leaves the station.

     So why bother to review the life of a willing, self destructive, self hateful person?  It is really because of the power of musical talent to elevate that leads one to watch the train wreck unfold and hope against hope that it can be averted, that the artist can see with final clarity the gift they have, and can make full use of it to inspire.  The truth is, the rescue required is an illusory dream that neither those  family close enough nor the music appreciator should have any expectation to see to fruition.  The musical gene, as powerful as it is, is overwhelmed by the base animal instincts to self imbibe, self pleasure, and self destroy.

     Amy Winehouse may have been a star, but like so many others, she was just a shooting star.

Posted on

The Debt Titanic


     On April 15th, 1912, the RMS Titanic, on her maiden voyage, the greatest and most beautiful of the White Star class trans-Atlantic passenger ships, improbably shuttered briefly, in the late evening hours, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. As alien and unsettling the shutter was, it was only briefly present and quickly was gone, and the ship went smoothly on her way to New York. The restored peace was false and illusory, as the fatal blow had already been delivered below the water line of the “unsinkable” three football field long craft, an iceberg buckling the hull plates past three bulkheads, and icy Atlantic water rushing in.  Within three short hours, the ship that had been considered universally from an engineering standpoint virtually “unsinkable”, had drawn an unbearable amout of water within its structure, heaving and splitting the ship, and sending her to the bottom.   The unthinkable had happened, and in a shorter time than any discerning person though conceivable,  with the loss of more than 1500 people.  The RMS Titanic, designed to be the perfect ocean ship, proved to be only too flawed and wholly unprepared for the reality of impacting an iceberg.

     On August 2nd, 2011, an iceberg awaits the titanic ship of state known as the United States economy.  On that day, the momentum of decades of deficit spending acclerated to an intolerable rate in the last few years, will impact against the immovable object of a debt ceiling beyond which the full faith and credit of the United States will be called into question if the impact is not avoided.   As surely as the mass of water finding and expanding weaknesses in Titanic’s hull, a default in the debt will weaken and crumple the solid foundations of an economy built on trust, credit, and investment and shake the country to its very foundations.  As on that terrible starry night in the middle of the Atlantic, the end will come sooner than any would have expected and the window of opportunity to make life saving corrections short indeed.

     The President and Speaker of the House have spent the past week in opposing roles.  The Speaker has been like the iceberg watchman, warning of the floating risks awaiting the ship of state and fashioning aggressive tactics to avoid the unsettling potential doom.  The President has been like the Captain of the proud ship, imperious, arrogant, convinced his place in history to drive the ship ever faster into the night and achieve the soon to be achieved acclaim.  The depressing part of this analogy is that this impending blow will occur in the light of day, premeditated, and in full view of all.  Will no one stop the inevitable sinking of this once unsinkable economy and restore it to its stable foundations?  If not, it won’t be the direct death of thousands, but rather the dagger in the heart of unfettered will, personal opportunity, and economic freedom. 

     If this President continues to drive the spend curve at the expense of fiscal sanity, if he continues to respond to the sinking ship with an insignificant simple re-arrangement of the deck chairs, he will have earned a ignominious title justly deserved – Worst. President. Ever.

Posted on

Okay, Tell Me One More Time…

     Okay, Tell me one more time. Why is Paul Ryan not running for President? I recall some ideas floated as to why he shouldn’t run, including those he continued to circulate himself – the budget committee needs him; the republican leadership needs him; his kids need him. After listening to Congressman Ryan again put into adult language the extent of the challenge facing this country, the continuing  theme plays out, this country needs him.

      We remain in the grip of soggy leadership that demands more taxes to pay for their uncontrolled spasms of spending, without being to articulate a single measurable process as to how the further sacrifice  of millions of Americans being asked to pay those taxes would have their sacrifice rewarded with government discipline.  Instead we suffer under the  continued hogwash and borderline criminal shoveling of money at 25% of the gross domestic product into bottomless ill defined “projects” and government coffers.  50 million Americans now receiving food stamps to pay for food. Nearly 20% of the country now requiring the government to underwrite their daily meal. 1 out of 6 Americans. Really?  Millions of Americans requiring “emergency” unemployment insurance for as much as four years since they last worked for their check. Really?  The bottom half of the American tax eligible public paying no income taxes. Really?  We will engage in deficit spending in the four years of this President that will equal, in one term, the combined deficit spending  of the first 232 years and first 43 Presidents of this republic. Really?

      We will never face up to the mature debate required to solve our mess unless we get people in positions of power who can understand the depth of the problem and articulate the way forward.  I suffer with the alternatives so far available to expose the emperor  having no clothes.  Listen to the message below and tell me the obvious best choice isn’t the congressman from Wisconsin.  The time is now to get into the arena. Right now.




Posted on

The Road to Jerusalem

     With so much history and epic drama at her disposal, the city of Jerusalem is a beacon for all who love to combine history and travel.  This wonderful video below comes via Small Dead Animals through Wizbang and therefore isn’t remotely my find.  With so much turmoil and strife ruling the world I thought it would be healthy though to take a little break from the maelstrom and sit back and take in a beautiful journey.  Please appreciate the road to Jerusalem shot with IMAX.  The video is best watched in its high definition glory and expanded to the full screen. Enjoy, and take in, what so many would destroy on a whim to prove their narrow, reactionary, and shuttered vision of the world, from which we all have sprung.

Jerusalem | Filmed in Imax 3D from JerusalemGiantScreen on Vimeo.

Posted on

Kabuki Theater and the Debt Ceiling Debate

     The great Japanese theater tradition of Kabuki reflects a stylized avant garde theater of the bizarre to dramatize the juxtaposition of the inner and outer emotions of the participants.  Grand kabuki is going on these days regarding the debt ceiling “crisis” in Washington, and the lead actor of the bizarre is our president himself, who has played multiple roles in the last week of the “sage adult”, “budget warrior”, “aggrieved victim”, and “petulant child”.  It would approach comical if it wasn’t so darn serious and sad at the same time. 

      In the grand tradition of kabuki, this story is predominantly one of tragedy. The most self-sufficient country on earth has managed to amass a 14.5 trillion dollar debt and over 4 trillion of it was prodigiously produced in just the last three years. The government currently borrows 43 cents on every dollar it spends and there is no end in sight. In this particular theatrical tragedy, the president warns of the calamity that will befall us if we don’t raise the debt limit allowing us to continue to sew the seeds of our own destruction, not the calamity that will befall us if we continue to spend like spendaholics and accumulate even more massive debt for us and our children. The shared responsibility of the accumulated debt for each of the over three hundred million Americans is a nice round number of about 45, 000 dollars per citizen, and that does not include the unfathomable sum of 100 trillion more of estimated unfunded liabilities.

     What does our Kabuki grand master say about such dire scenarios? Well, its obvious to him that the obstruction to fiscal sanity is the rich not paying their fair share. That’s an effective mask to wear when emoting in front of a hurting American public, but the facts would suggest that if President Obama succeeded at confiscating 100% of the earnings of the top ten percent of the country in taxes, he would manage to pay off a third of the total budget he currently spends in a single fiscal year. Nice start and sorry about that confiscation angle, but clearly that rhetoric doesn’t even remotely budge the burgeoning debt exposure.

     The apparently difficult thing for everyone to understand is that if you spend considerably more than your income, the best way to reduce your fiscal vulnerability is to only spend maximally what your income is. Certainly we can even argue that spending every last dollar of your income is probably not good budget management either, in that one would hope there would always be savings for future needs. Instead we are spending for past needs, present needs, and future needs all on present income. Somehow the government senses we will figure a way in the future to fix the mess when the problem has ballooned to even more stratospheric levels when we find our currently collective will to solve it now is non-existent.  This is what George Will of the Washington Post refers to as the government’s “terrifying self-confidence”.     

The actors in kabuki are participants in a play where the greater audience can see the unfolding tragedy and are powerless to stop it. The issue fundamentally will never be whether the United States should be permitted to default on the money it is indebted to pay. The issue is whether we will ever ask ourselves again as adults used to do in this country,what are we spending money on, is it money well spent, and can we afford it. People in Washington DC, come on! The play is over, real life is here, and its time to put away the masks and the party favors.