How Did It Get This Bad? or "Life After Man"

It is sad, troubling and down right scary that, America, the engine of democracy and arsenal of the world has become a nation without a future? You ask, "how could I say we have no future?" Simple, we've just let it happen and like global warming once it's here it's hard to deal with and will take greater effort to overcome.

Jobs, good jobs, any jobs, have just about disappeared from most of our small towns and cities. A new term has been applied to the old manufacturing areas of this country, "Rust Belt." Everything is just rusting away like that old car in the woods, or that lawnmower left behind the shed.

Politicians dam near break their arms trying to pat themselves on their back when they say umpteen thousand jobs have been saved or created! Just great! The new joke is not how many (Ethnic Insert) does it take to screw in a light bulb ..... ? But how many of these new jobs does it take to make a whole one?

So many union jobs, now don't think I'm pro or con on unions, just the facts here, have been lost over the years that the biggest employer of union labor is Government! What that tell you? Once an indicator of the health of our manufacturing prowess the barometer is heading below hurricane pressure and falling fast!

America has been the dream land to many of the worlds people. Our country and its culture have been built on the premise that hard work, ingenuity, a little luck and by the grace of God a person could become something. Immigrant families came to America, and they still do, (although some not within the legal framework) with aspirations for a better life, not only for themselves but also for their children and their children.

Not everyone was destined to become a Rockefeller, Carnegie, or an Astor. But they had the opportunity to dream and aspire to a greater level than what they had elsewhere. They had opportunity! What do we have today? Somewhere along the line the human condition intervened and what was once thought of as success morphed itself into a feeding frenzy of greed.

The broken down empires of Europe got themselves into a urinating contest about 100 years ago and dam near killed each other in the process. They exhausted resources both in men and material for what? To show who had the bigger set? And like spoiled children they couldn't work out a compromise and they went at it again about twenty years later.

America, concentrating on its own growth and emergence as an industrial and potential world player was too far removed from the bedlam that was occurring just three thousand miles away. We had vast untapped natural resources and growth potential. We were the young kid on the block and not an old wheezing rocking chair bound artifact of a former time. We were full of "piss and vinegar!" We had what it took to get the job done. A sleeping giant, some say. But when awoken, the American spirit took that potential to the limit. We supplied the needed resources and materiel to get the job done and overcome the belligerents and quite down the neighborhood.

After the second time around with this nonsense, there was a vacuum, that left the world out of balance. We were faced with a dilemma, we cleaned up the neighborhood with the lesser of two evils only to loose the streets to a new gang of thugs? Or do we step up to the plate and help our our neighbors.

We did what our country's Judeo-Christian heritage taught us to do, help out the less fortunate. It is much like spending our time and money to help rebuild a neighbors store, after a fire, and we let ours go. They had the newer store and everyone went to them. Lower prices to get new customers in the door, fancy state of the art displays and a security system paid for and operated by us while our store lost customer base and was slowly robbed.

Investment money in American business became a system of cut and run. Buy it, gut it and sell it and put the money elsewhere. People in the neighborhood can go across the street to shop.

So over a period of years our side of the street became the low rent district. Nobody wanted to invest here. Businesses were going across the street or down the block and people living on our side of the neighborhood were forced into lower skilled and lower paying jobs. One family incomes became two and then three and sometimes today four or more and yet we're still broke! No money and little to no future. Sure there are jobs going unfilled. But not everyone can be a nurse or a teacher. Where's the painter, plumber, electrician and other skilled craftsman going to come from? Who's around to fix a broken TV or Bike? Just throw it away because it's cheaper to get a new one than fix the old!

We worship the "cause de celebrity" (sic) and pay vast sums of money to bask in their glow and charm. We buy products that we are told we, "Just got to have," because "Joe Cool Beans" says so. We let our banking system become nothing more than a bookmakers dream by running the odds on broken down racehorses. Sooner or later the old nag will win and the payouts will be staggering and break the bank! We talk a good line about "Buying American," yet we scream bloody murder when we see the price!

Our government, once a model for all to imitate, is nothing short today of a legalised Mafia exacting tribute through taxes and and helping their well healed friends. Politicians take the easy road and blame the other guy for the lack of direction and results. Deflect the issue and maybe we won't see the Emperor without his clothes! All the while we wonder how we got here.

How can we really understand this situation without looking inward? We are the masters of our own destiny, not some special interest lobbyist, greedy banker, or self promoting politician. This country was founded on the principals of freedom and self reliance, yet we have succumbed to an almost indentured servitude to these people. We say we abhor them but we are unwilling to refute their being! We are like the sickly addict in the darkened alleyway, looking for that fix to make us forget the problems and are willing to take whatever is thrown our way as a panacea of indulgence rather than take a tonic for what ails us.

We have let the system self perpetuate itself. Our own inaction and self fulfilment has allowed this to happen. The system was suppose to protect us, the people! But we have failed ourselves. We need to start someplace. We need to get beyond the "I'm right and he's wrong" element that divides us. We have started to evolve into that wheezy old codger in the rocking chair from Europe of 100 years ago. Getting into a Urinating contest with each other over no real reason rather than building a sustainable and coexistent future. Are we becoming just like the elected officials that bicker and point at each other and get nothing done? Are we evolving, or should I say we are de-evolving into our own worst nightmare?

Let's get our crap together. Like global warming, we can reverse the trend, but we have to start someplace and the best place is to embrace the notion that we are all God's children, and he being the father, should be pretty pissed off at us! We need to look for what holds us together rather than what drives us apart. Life is to short to keep going this way. If we don't come to grips with our problems and seek a common solution through understanding, compassion and compromise those programs on the History Channel, foretelling "Life After Man" will be true long before we know it!