Over a Cliff

With wide eyes and a huge, toothy grin, Mac stomped on the gas. Seven hundred horses howled.
"Why have a car without a monster engine?" he asked and laughed. "I love the smell of burning rubber. I love speed! And I ain't driving some little dinky sports car. The bigger, the better."
The car leaped ahead and rapidly accelerated. I could barely move my head as it was pushed back into the headrest, but I had to look at the speedometer. It was already reading sixty miles per hour. Seventy. Seventy-five and climbing.
"I've invested in every power option I could find for this baby," Mac yelled over the roar of the engine."My parts man is looking for more. No expense spared. This is my top investment."
Eighty. Eighty-five. I cranked by head around and looked forward. I didn't like my future with Mac behind the wheel of his pride and joy.
"What about the law?" I tried to pierce the engine noise and Mac's obsession with going faster. "You're breaking the speed limit."
All Mac did was laugh like I was the greatest comedian he'd ever heard.
Then a speeding ticket became a moot point as the car left the road ... and kept gaining speed. Ninety. One hundred. One hundred and ten.
Mac had to scream to be heard. "Why build a monster engine and not push it to the limit?"
By then, over barely level ground, we are hurtling ahead at one-hundred-thirty miles per hour. And I wish I'd kept my eyes on the speedometer rather than peer ahead.
"Mac! A cliff! We're headed toward a cliff!"
"What a rush!" Mac shouted. He didn't seem to have heard me or seen the danger in front of us as the mechanical beast passed one-hundred-fifty miles per hour. "This is how this car was meant to be driven. I've still got pedal left."
And he pushed the pedal harder.
"Stop! Stop! Please, Mac, stop! Turn the wheel before we go over the edge."
Fifteen trillion dollars! Sixteen trillion dollars! And rising.
"A bigger government is a better government," the driver declares. "We need to invest more in bailouts, health care, entitlements, education ... in any program for social justice we can create!"
Bailouts to the tune of hundreds of billions. Maintain an annual budget deficit of more than one trillion dollars. Print more money.
Create more bureaucracy. Need more jobs? Let them be in the government.
Don't tell the drivers the growth in debt and deficit ... the speed ... is unsustainable. They're ignoring any resemblance of their massive, suped-up automobile to nation vehicles in Europe that are falling over cliffs.
Their ears seem deaf to warnings about the economic laws they are breaking.
"Spend, spend, spend!" is their battle cry. "Borrow, borrow, borrow," from China or whoever will loan the money ... until they won't anymore. They are oblivious to the loss of true liberty as the unassailable wall of debt encircles the nation.
"Speed! I need more speed!"