Opinion: A Dose of Reality and a State of the Union in Disrepair

By John F. Di Leo, Opinion Contributor

It is 2024, and the State of the Union is broken.

It’s been that way for a while, frankly, but the Biden-Harris regime has sped up the process.

Every year, a man stands before Congress and delivers a State of the Union Address, as the Constitution requires; sometimes it feels like that’s the only constitutional requirement they obey in their entire term.

They cheer the good things, as they see them, and they attack the things they consider bad. Then they often either disregard the most serious threats entirely, or they blame them on their political opponents.

And all too often, they read out a laundry list of their proposed solutions – a costly list of new programs which, taken together (and sometimes even individually), would utterly bankrupt the nation.

In truth, spending won’t solve America’s problems, largely because of who we’d be empowering to spend it. Another billion here or another billion there, however well-intended by voters who might like the idea, will just go to the same bureaucrats who dug this deep hole in the first place.

It is time to find another way, and if we really want to, we certainly can.

An honest state of the union speech would find a metaphor that everyone would understand. Perhaps a fine old car that barely runs.

Once a wonderful, luxury automobile, state of the art, but it has fallen into disrepair from lack of quarterly oil changes and annual upkeep. The power windows no longer work; worn-out brakes make it unsafe even at low speeds. The shocks have been wrecked from carrying far too much weight for far too long.

This doesn’t mean you give up on the car; it doesn’t need to be sent to the junkyard. But a shiny coat of wax and a good scrubbing of the interior isn’t going to be enough.

Spending money on racing stripes and a fancy sound system, when the vehicle is barely drivable is worse than useless, it’s irresponsible. The fundamentals have been neglected for so long, the vehicle needs some time in the shop. We’ve forgotten we have a hand brake; let’s get it working and start using it again. We’re lurching all over the road; the car needs a front-end alignment again.

It needs to be returned to first principles.

And so it is with the United States today.

Our system was designed to enable the success and prosperity of entrepreneurs; our crush of bureaucracy and litigation now stamps them out before they can start.

Our system was designed to enable the poor to reach middle class, and for the middle class to rise to wealth; our overwhelming tax burden today makes such a rise almost impossible outside of a well-connected group or a narrow career path.

The American justice system was designed to protect the individual law-abiding citizen, and his family and possessions. Today, with confiscatory taxes and a revolving door justice system, the law-abiding citizen has twice the enemies to fear: both the criminal class and his own often-malevolent government.

In fact, as we look from issue to issue, and recognize the challenges that America faces today, we can come to only one conclusion: these aren’t the unavoidable challenges caused by neglect; they are the thoroughly avoidable results of intentional abuse. In many ways, it’s been sabotage from within.

We suffer from inflation levels unseen for 45 years for a reason: high energy prices and uncontrolled deficit spending have devalued the currency to the point that wage increases can never keep up with price increases.

The most basic, necessary purchases of American life – housing, food and transportation – have been intentionally saddled with unnecessary cost increases, as the federal government has mandated the termination of technology that works, like single-phase gas furnaces and gas ovens, diesel trucks and gasoline-powered cars, and forced outrageously expensive alternatives on the marketplace. Intentionally high energy costs drive up the price of everything we do, everything we buy, everything we consume.

Our cities are rapidly turning into economic deserts, as tens of millions of recently arrived illegal aliens scare away law-abiding residents and drive employees into other counties or even other states.

Our schools are being ruined by a combination of subverted textbooks, the crowding out of basic studies by “politically correct” nonsense, and a plethora of languages in every classroom that makes effective teaching impossible.

The traditional pathway to the American dream – a thriving manufacturing sector, enabling hard-working employees to climb the ladder to success – has been whittled away by crippling taxes and regulations, hostile labor unions and an explosion of litigation, and the gradual replacement of our own products with an avalanche of foreign imports.

While neither party is completely blameless, in almost all these issues, the Democrats did the conscious damage, and the Republicans’ only failing was in too timid an opposition. But the overwhelming responsibility everywhere and on every issue, is on the Left.

It’s the Left that empowered unions to feed their power-hungry leadership and disregard the interests of their membership, adopting hostile methods that drove thousands of employers out of business or out of the country.

It’s the Left that actually campaigned, again and again for a century, on ever-higher taxes until well over half our earnings go to some level of government.

It’s the Left that blew a 2000-mile hole in our southern border and invited tens of millions of foreign indigents and criminals into our country, then set them free to live off our largesse and endanger our most vulnerable citizens.

It’s the Left that poisoned gullible minds with the climate hoax – scaring people into abandoning proven energy sources that work (oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear), and convincing them to adopt utterly inefficient sources that can never truly even pay for themselves (solar, wind, and battery).

Again and again, everywhere we turn, the wreckage of these last few years of Democrat rule envelops us.

Blue state governors and mayors destroyed our schools during the covid lockdowns; a whole generation has been robbed of education, of physical health, even of sanity, as a result.

Obamacare and its many permutations have gradually destroyed what was once the greatest healthcare system on earth through the warping of the insurance process, driving countless millions of workers into less-productive careers, locking them into government dependency for life.

The illegal alien explosion has caused a direct funnel of government money to the industry that serves these new arrivals; through our taxes, we now pay for lavish meals, airplane rides, clothing and months of hotel rooms, all for foreign gatecrashers – luxuries that most taxpayers could never afford to buy for our own families.

Contrast all this with the solid progress our nation was making just four years ago, under the Trump Administration:

Four years ago, the USA was a net exporter of energy, the greatest producer of petroleum and natural gas on earth. Millions of regular Americans were enjoying prosperity as a result. Until the Biden-Harris regime turned off the spigot out of spite, just to flex their power over us.

Four years ago, the United States were enjoying a manufacturing renaissance, as President Trump’s punitive tariffs on Chinese goods were beginning to pay dividends, with American businesses beginning re-shoring efforts and American factory startups thriving with new business.

Four years ago, the American economy was finally expanding after the eight years of Obama-Biden malaise, because the Trump Administration was sunsetting the dead weight of so many federal department policies, and lifting the millstones of the neck of American entrepreneurship.

We know what America needs to succeed again. America is wounded, weakened, handicapped, but we know why, and we know exactly who did it.

America can blossom again. We just need to jettison the Left from political and bureaucratic power.

America can become a growth engine again, and the American people can be prosperous again, but only if we throw off the dead weight of this leviathan, before it smothers us for good.

Copyright 2024 John F. Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based trade compliance trainer and transportation manager, writer, and actor. Once a County Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, after serving as president of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s, he has been writing regularly for Illinois Review since 2009. Follow John F. Di Leo on Facebook, Twitter, Gettr, MeWe or TruthSocial.

Also an actor in Chicagoland’s community theatre circuit, John will be playing “Old Joe” Boyd in the Gaslight Players production of the musical “Damn Yankees,” only on Friday, March 1 and Friday, March 8, 2024 at St. Stephen Protomartyr in Des Plaines, Illinois.