D E B I L I T A T I N G M I S C O N C E P T I O N S
The delusion that we can have our cake and eat it too.
The third debilitating misconception is the delusion that we can have our cake and eat it too. Although it would be fantastic to solve our problems with little effort or send the bill to someone else, those are unrealistic fantasies.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in the Candyland board game. Don’t get us wrong, we desperately wish we did.
We wish that we could all sit in a colorful field of Pixy Stixs, singing Kumbaya and licking lollypop flowers under a marshmallow sky filled with Skittle rainbows. Little elves, who make delicious cookies, live in sugarplum trees that will never be harvested, you really do get $200 every time you pass Go, and an extraordinarily handsome prince will gallop in to gently kiss the sleeping princess, saving her from a lifetime of kissing good for nothing frogs.
The words coronavirus, riots, recession, fiscal cliff, police brutality and inequality are banned, and never again are we forced to eat all of our vegetables because there really aren’t kids starving in Africa after all.
We breathe air as pure as those oxygen bars in L.A., while we drive our environmentally responsible Hummers as oil gushes from our unpolluted earth like a chocolate fountain.
We not only have free tuition but actually get paid to go to college, are given a comprehensive and universal health care plan for our birthdays and get a bright and shiny national infrastructure for Christmas. The Oompa-Loompas at Treasury will print money 24/7 to pay for our goodies and we are taxed only 2% of our earnings thanks to several permanent tax cuts. Oh, happy day!!
We know better. We know that it’s impossible to sustain freedom and liberty without sacrifice. To abandon this basic truth will only create a deeper and deeper hole for all of us. You know what they say when you’re digging yourself further into a hole don’t you? Stop digging!