Beliving What We Are Told

There comes a time in every child's life when they are willful. They think that they are invincible and that nothing and no one can stop them. They are fearless and free, yet are also slaves to their emotions and whims. A child in this stage will not listen. They believe with their vast knowledge gathered at the unpreceded age of 4 that they know everything that there is to know and that the adult knows absolutely nothing. Therefore, they dare to touch the stove burner while it is still hot, and feel the searing metal upon their flesh and cry out in pain and say: "why didn't you tell me" and wail.
There are many examples of how the United States is much like the willful child. We are smart, perhaps too smart for our own good, and we know it. We live in the richest and most freest nation in the world, yet instead of exercising those rights by voting or getting involved in our communities, we are a slave to our T.V.'s that show us sexy reality stars or actors or whatever rubbish happens to be on the the glass screen. The stove that we are about to touch or in the process of grasping is our economy, and it is hurting to try and exercise so much control over something that is falling hard and way to fast for us to grasp. I am positive that there are financial analysts who predicted a downturn, a recession, an increase of unemployment, and a crumbling social security system. Yet, just as the parent is ignored by the child, so has the U.S. ignored sound financial judgment and advice.
The U.S. has been working on this childlike ego for decades. We have chosen to get in debt time and time again to help fund government programs that were supposed to help the economy. I believe that this technique was first used by the great FDR to help with the Great Depression. And the solution worked-for a little while. However, it does not make sense to me how one can fix a problem by spending money, and our great nation continued to borrow more and more money from foreign countries that were more that happy to give it to us for all sorts of 'improvements' both in our own country and abroad. In a sense, we have always had an inflated market, full of money that is not ours that we did not earn and that we do not deserve. So, I am not as shocked as most are or seem to be at the present state of our economy.
The whole nation knows that banks, auto manufacturers, retail chains, and a slew of other businesses have burned their hand on the stove and is now crying out to the U.S. government to 'bail them out' of their insolvency. But how many companies can the federal government support? Which ones are the most important and who needs the assistance the most? How many people would loose their jobs if the CEO's and CFO's are not given that aid and where will we get the money to give to the company? Which companies will only fail six months later? And what do you do if a whole state (California) is going under fast?
I am glad that I am not the parent of the willful child, because I would not even know where to begin to solve the problems. There are just so many affecting our nation that the decisions will be tough to make and the answer will definitely not benefit everyone. I strongly believe that the U.S. will pull out of this eventually, but the process will be long, painful, and hard.

*This essay was inspired by an article on Google News-Dems push for GOP senator to back state budget http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article