Ridiculous

One of the tricks in life is knowing the difference between the ridiculous and the reasonable.

My community has weekly outdoor municipal band concerts during the summer, as they have had for most of the last century.  The concerts are financed by "the city"; band members are considered temporary city employees.  Recently, the city council announced they were making various budget cuts, including ending the concerts.  The concerts don't cost much, so cutting them from the budget didn't save much money, but it was a high-profile cutback -- something that everyone noticed.  A concerned citizen stepped forward with enough money to finance the concerts for several years.  Since that time, more citizens have come forward with cash, and the concerts have continued uninterrupted with no more city funding.  It has all been quite reasonable.

My favorite high school teacher used to regularly include some "joke" answers on his multiple choice history exams.  So, for example, even if a student did not know precisely who the "condottieri" were, he or she might be able to correctly rule out that they were the Superbowl champions from 1970.  You would THINK that this would make the exams slightly easier.  Imagine my surprise in learning that the CORRECT answer to one of the questions was an answer that I had ruled out as a joke, "the Venerable Bede".

This points out the fact that it is not always easy to distinguish between the ridiculous and the reasonable.  People hold a wide variety of beliefs.  I have known for some time that the "Flat Earth Society" continues to exist, at least on paper, but I only recently learned it is not strictly a joke.  There really ARE people who claim to still believe that the earth is flat, just as there are even more people who claim to still believe that the earth is only a few thousand years old, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.

Then there is politics.  Some of the positions taken by politicians and their parties and supporters seem to defy all logic, yet there are large numbers of people who accept these positions as reasonable.

The United States government is trillions of dollars in debt, and that debt is growing at a shocking rate, yet many politicians, and regular citizens, argue that we do not have a spending problem.  Meanwhile, President Barack Obama fights any effort to cut spending, arguing that the IMPORTANT thing is to raise taxes on "the rich".  Perhaps after we do THAT, he will be willing to consider spending cuts.

Now we have "the sequester", a set of government spending limits (not necessarily cuts) that kicked in automatically after the various political bodies were unable to reach any better compromise.  Critics of President Obama argued in advance of the sequester that he was misrepresenting the potential impact of the sequester, and would purposely TRY to make the impact as painful as possible.

When the sequester came, it was soon announced that there would be no more tours of the White House, due to funding cuts caused by the sequester.  In response to the public outcry, billionaire Donald Trump eventually offered that he would personally pay for continuing the White House tours (an amount which it seems he could easily afford, based on the available information about his wealth and income, and the cost of the tours).

I would have thought this would be the end of this part of the story.  The American people want to be able to tour their White House, many people want to reduce government spending, President Obama wants "the rich" to pay more, and Donald Trump is rich.  The tours would continue, government spending would be reduced, and the rich would pay more.  Everybody wins.

I was wrong.  A White House "senior adviser" rejected Donald Trump's offer, stating that it is important that the American public learn that there are real consequences of the sequester.  Apparently, we have misbehaved, and now must face the consequences, rather than have rich Donald Trump take care of the problem.

To me, this seems quite ridiculous.  IF cutting the tours was truly necessary for economic reasons, and a rich person is offering to pay for the tours, then why haven't the tours already been restored?  Is the Obama administration really willing to continue to block the tours, just to attempt to teach the American people a lesson?

Perhaps the most ridiculous aspect of this issue is that there are those who attacked Donald Trump for making the offer, and defended President Obama.  I am not saying there is nothing to attack about Donald Trump, but if a rich person offers to pay for something, no strings attached, and the President continues to argue that we don't have enough money to pay for it ... it all seems quite ridiculous.  But perhaps I am missing something.  I MUST be missing something.  It CAN'T be that ridiculous.

Trump's offer was many months ago.  Someday soon, the tours will resume, at least on a limited basis, and the Obama administration will take credit, and ask for gratitude, for dealing with a problem that they themselves created.  THAT seems ridiculous.

Truth is complicated.