A short sighted people

Not that I am any sort of economist or great with personal finance, but a general rules that I have found to be true is most things that seem to be good short term hurt more long term. To put it more clearly when we just focus on making things better right now we make things worse for our future.
We are going to borrow billions of dollars to help keep our economy from slumping any farther. Some say that when all the bail outs are added up it will be over a trillion.
Could I as an individual after finding myself without a job and severely in debt go to a bank and say "hey I am broke, but if you let me borrow some money it will fix everything." Never has the thought been that we need to cut back as a nation. As an individual I would start doing things like getting rid of the cable and the cars, but I do not think most Americans think this way. I believe this is reflected by our governments approach to the economic problems.
Just because you can't afford a $200,000 dollar home doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to live in one. Our nation like far too many of its citizens lives off of more than it makes.
We believe we are entitled to a quality of life we can not afford.
Instead of making cut backs to get back on track we just borrow more? I know I may be simplifying things but I am a simple man. There are a number of causes to our economic problems, but in general its all about spending more than we save and buy everything on credit.
Seriously why would anyone let someone in debt up to their eyeballs borrow money, and how dumb does the borrower have to be to think more debt is the solution.
Our government wants to fix the problem with out us changing anything about how we deal with money. This should not surprise us. Politicians lives are nothing but popularity contest. They have to keep people happy, and no one in America wants to hear that they need to save money and live off of less than they make. We do not want to hear that we may have to make cut backs in our rock star life styles.
So far the advice that our government has given us is that we need to keep spending, and if we do not have the money to spend they will give us some to spend.
We just get our stimulus check and say thanks to Uncle Sam. I mean dang this is stupid.
Our President wants to create jobs for people in fields like alternative energy source.
Alternative energy resources is another topic, but have we not tried letting the government creating jobs for us before? Yes. Everyone knows this is what FDR did to try and help get us out of the depression and everyone knows and I do not mean debates, but knows that it did not get us out of the depression. What did it do? It made the government bigger than it ever was before and probably contributed more than anything else to the idea of welfare and that the government is suppose to save the day when things get tough.
What the people wanted then and what they want now is for someone to "fix it." They do not care how or what the long term effects will be just as long as their lives now can be as uninterrupted as possible.
We are a very short sighted people.
Now back to FDR. Most history books will tell you that while his plans did not get America out of the Depression they did give people hope. Enter Barack Obama our nations new source of hope.
Its not hard to see why history has been so kind to FDR and why the nation loves President Obama. They both offered "hope." But the problem with the government solving individuals problems is that 1. it can't solve its own 2. it leaves the individual dependent on government.

Please forgive the poor spelling and sentence structure. My proof reader is asleep. She will be mortified I'm sure when she checks this for errors.