A chicken in every pot, healthcare for everyone, it's all still a Genie in a Bottle!

The magic of unleashing the Genie.

Ever been sold a bill of goods that was to good to be true?  Have you ever fallen in love with an idea that turned out to be nothing but work in the end?  To often we see the positive side of a deal before we look at the price or negative connotations of it.  You can see it clearly on late night television infomercials.  The benefits of the new state of the art knife's ability to do all types of slicing and dicing are put front and center. The fact that you'll be charged and recharged over the next seven months is not disclosed.  It's what I like to refer to as the Genie let out of the Bottle effect.  My generation grew up watching "I Dream of Jeanie".  On the show, an astronaut finds a bottle and releases a beautiful Genie.  She seemed like a dream come true and was so beautiful no one could take their eyes off of her.  The problem was all her "magic" and help led to more trouble than anyone could imagine. Which interestingly enough holds true with the origins of Genies.  The concept comes from the Muslim world. A Jinn (which is plural) was a spiritual creature made by God but has a free will like man.  A Jinn almost always ends up tricking a human in a negative way in the folklore of Islam.

We are still to this day being promised Genies in Bottles.  Wouldn't it be great if we could give all the elderly money to live out their final years on?  Well sure it would.  Then you need to talk about how to pay for it.  Wouldn't it be just perfect if the richest nation on Earth would feed all the poor people for free?  Of course it would.  Now let's talk about who pays for that.  Wait, what's that?  You don't want to have that conversation?  You only want to be part of the feeding the poor not the paying for the food part?  How's that going to maintain it's self?  Well, maybe it was a bad idea.  Let's not do that anymore.  The problem then becomes, how do you put the Genie back in the Bottle?  Once all the poor people (and others) are used to eating for free, how do you stop feeding them?  Nobody wants to pay for this but nobody wants to be the one that says no more free food.  Same thing with universal healthcare.  Everyone wants all of humanity to benefit from the best healthcare on Earth.  But we only want to talk about all the good it would do.  No one wants to talk about the nuts and bolts of the actual implementation of it.  The new Affordable Healthcare Website is up and jammed.  It's not working and it won't do the job that it's supposed to do.  But none of that matters.  The laws are passed and the Genie is out of the Bottle.  There is no going back.  Now we must learn to live with this ill thought out mess that is going to impact every part of our nation, whether you are for or against it.

Sometimes it's best to not make promises.  Some things are better left alone.  If it sounds to good to be true then it probably has a price to pay on the back end.  Our Founding Fathers didn't talk about Utopia or a perfect world.  They fought for a place that everyone would be free to find their own path.  When you put us all in the same pot or healthcare system, then we are no longer free to find our own way.  It's time to stop asking Genies for wishes and do like our forefathers and blaze our own trails in this country.  Time to leave the bottle in the sand.