Orwellian Reality: Unsustainable = Will Clearly Be Sustained

We need a new word to replace "unsustainable" in speaking of our government's fiscal policy. Our current fiscal path is unsustainable to be sure, but, aside from stating to grate, the word "unsustainable" is perversely providing cover for the type of behavior that it is supposed to check. Whereas ordinarily the goal of pointing out the unsustainability of something is to get the object of your concerns to cease to sustain the dangerous behavior in question, the word has come to be a feeble bona fides for a basic level of connectedness to reality. One can, as most all politicians seem to be doing, agree to the assessment of "unsustainable" to establish membership in the world of the sane and then go back to sustaining the status quo. In the modern political lexicon "unsustainable" now means, "we have more time until the implosion." This is how you can speak of a drug addiction as unsustainable if it is somebody else's drug addiction, but if it is your teenage child's drug addiction then unsustainable takes on its normal meaning, aka "this must stop and I will make it stop, now." The critical difference in the two meanings is whether one cares about the implosion or not. A loving parent cannot countenance the disastrous, rock bottom situation that a child will eventually arrive at if a drug addiction is allowed to persist, so unsustainable means, "shall not be sustained." A left-wing government's concern over the eventual bankruptcy of a free-market, capitalist nation is slight, perhaps even desired. But there are elections, so a nod is made to "unsustainable" so voters can be lulled into thinking "he gets it," but the behavior somehow persists. When enough people view our government's spending habits as that loving parent, things will stop, otherwise things will hurtle along unsustainably until we hit the wall and we'll look back and say "I guess we were right, this all was unsustainable, why didn't we do anything about it?" Let me clue you in folks, there is no joy in being correct and yet bankrupt.

We need a new Congress to be sure, but first we need a new word. Personally, I prefer two words - "f**king insane." Until we ditch "unsustainable" and start talking about government spending in new terms - like "f**cking insane" - we won't get any traction.