This Election's Sad Revelation(s)

There's a poll on Facebook about how most think that Mitt Romney is "unlikeable" and asks who agrees.  Frannkly, I'm disgusted at just how well this election depicts the sort of viciously petty jealousy that the country has fallen into.  MOST people, regardless of economic class, seem to have screwed up in the last ten years or so and their financial lives are in shambles.  They bought what they couldn't afford and fell for the risky, too-good-to-be-true deals of the corporations, banks and other financial institutions, but instead of taking responsibility for their part and picking themselves up, they turn on anyone that didn't make the same mistakes and advocate their punishment via everything from taxes to actual litigation for being too "greedy" and self-serving.  I'm not particularly fond of Mitt Romney.  Frankly, I think he makes a boring candidate and I worry about some of his attitudes towards potential war with Iran and/or North Korea.  However, beyond party differences and whether or not one thinks he'd make a good president, most of his critics, it seems, would be critical of him SOLELY because of his wealth or because people think he hasn't given away enough.  Has he made mistakes?  Sure, we all have.  Has he been or seemed to be dishonest and inconsistent?  Show me a successful politician that hasn't.  Did some of the companies he invested in shipped jobs to China or folded at the expense of a lot of American' jobs?  Yeah, probably, but who can prove that this was PERSONALLY Romney's fault?  Who can prove that any more than, say, Solyndra's collapse was the "fault" of Obama, whose investment wasn't even his own money, but YOURS?

Even if there is a solution to this economic crisis - whether in the private or public sector, or both - I fear it's pointless because as long as we, "the people," are neither encouraged nor made to take more responsibility for our own parts in this catastrophe (given that this is a country "for the people, BY the people"), we'll just muck it up again and see either a perpetual cycle or a total collapse of our economic system (which wouldn't be as great as someo f you probably think) and freedoms.  Why?  Because freedom comes with responsibilities, and if those responsibilities are not taken, then that freedom either turns on us or is lost for good.