Last week, a water main in West Point broke and the town was without water for a day. I could not shave or take my shower. I go downstairs and turn on the spigot, but had no water to make my coffee. So I got an apple from the refrigerator to serve as breakfast. As I go to wash the contamination off the apple (as it has been exposed to multiple human hands plus there was a label pasted on it), I had no choice but to peel it in order to make it safe to eat.

In my truck on the way to my refuge from work in LaFayette, I mulled over what a “Nation of Dummies We Are.” As a young lad during the 1930’s, I experienced part of the great American depression. Most rural residences got their water from a drilled well. You let a metal bucket attached to rope down into the well and scooped up the water into the pail.

Almost always, these wells were located somewhere on the premises but very seldom did they join the house. To obtain water for all cooking and household uses meant drawing multiple buckets of water from the well located out in the yard. Personal hygiene was using a wet towel to wipe off at night and bathing once a week in a metal tub.

The thought that I had is that we are headed for a great depression which could be worse than the one in the 1930’s. Why would anyone think that we are creating a condition for great depression when our economy is the strongest that it has been in years? Well, how about the federal deficit of over $21,000,000,000,000? Don’t the 535 electorate dummies realize that we can’t continue to add to this trillions dollar deficit? Instead of voting to balance the budget they keep adding to the total.

These numbers are approximate and I doubt that anyone can give you an exact figure, but it means that every US citizen owes various lenders $62,000. For a family of five, their part in the federal debt is $310,000. For most families, they can never pay out this indebtedness. And it gets even worse– paying the current indebtedness is next to impossible. Using an interest rate of 3%, every citizen pays $1,800 in interest on the national debt. Of course, a high percentage (14.7% of the money borrowed), is from other governmental agencies such as social security.

Now here is the scary part, China holds 5.8% of total indebtedness. We are paying our greatest country’s threat billions of dollars in interest for the money loaned to the United States. Also, there is a contingency of rogue nations down in the Cayman Islands that hold a significant part of our foreign debt.

You think that by cutting out our donations to countries such as Israel would allow us to balance the budget. That is not the case as the budget for aid to other nations is only 1.5% of the total indebtedness but still, why do we give $320 million in aid per year to Mexico? They are doing nothing to help us control illegal immigration or the shipment of drugs from Mexico into the United States.

Another action by our government to mull over is the gift of advanced military hardware such as missile capable aircraft. The State Department’s 2017 budget request included approximately $5.7 billion for Foreign Military Financing—recipients included Israel, but ALSO Jordan and Egypt, Pakistan and Iraq. Any thinking person will tell you that you cannot buy friendship. If your friend goes in the other direction, you have armed your foe.

I am the first to admit that my limited knowledge of maintaining our economy and making peaceful deals with other countries is not in the same league as our electorate.

But one thing I do know, we are dangerously close to destroying our country through failing to balance our budget. It is almost impossible to gain the true figures.

And my son-in-law heard a statistic that the revenue needed per citizen (not per taxpayer) just to balance this year’s federal budget would be $20,000 per person. Do you pay $20,000 per year in federal taxes? Once again, that would mean $100,000 for a family of 5. And think of those who don’t pay any taxes at all!

I think the dummies are not the elected officials, but the voters because no candidate can be elected unless he agrees not to cut your economic interests. I will not vote for anyone who will cut my social security check. Others will not vote for someone who is trying to balance the budget by reducing their welfare benefits.

Others will not vote for anyone who will cut back on military spending. My solution is to cut back by 10% the government payments to every recipient, no matter the program, or truly the percentage that it takes to balance the budget. It will hurt the economy as there would 10% less business and private expenditures. However, it must be done.

We are “A Nation of Dummies” and the voters will not relent on benefits as long as they can vote into office the candidate who can offer even more GIMMIES.