As 2012 winds down we have three Fridays left to prepare for Christmas and one after that to contemplate the New Year and all that it entails. For conservatives 2012 has been a very bad year and I suspect many have not recovered from the jolt of the November elections that renewed President Obama’s hold on the Oval Office.
I surely have not. I spent the last four years devoting lots of thought to the damage Obama was inflicting on the economy and, by extension, the lives of Americans. So, on this Friday, the volume of chatter about the looming “fiscal cliff” is increasing with everyone, Washington insiders and observers, all fervently hoping for “a last minute deal” to somehow avoid “taxamegon”, the greatest increase in taxes ever.
At this point, I don’t see a deal in the works. Simply put, Obama has long since demonstrated he has no capacity for compromise. The powers in Washington are talking past one another, not with one another and we are in a political era of such dramatic division it is a wonder to recall that Democrats and Republicans once actually did work together for the greater good of the nation.
What I do not understand is why so many Americans seem so unperturbed by the increase in the taxes they will pay despite the fact that considerable pain will set in. On television there are man-in-the-street interviews that suggest quite a few have no idea what the fiscal cliff is!