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Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Hope And Change Revisted


Like probably most everyone in America, I watched the chaos of the shooting at the school in Troutdale, Oregon.  Having lived in those parts made it more real to me, but when we showed up at weekly firehouse training it got really real.  We spent the night doing an Active Shooter scenario with the sheriff’s department at a local school.  We went in and dragged out wounded victims as the armed deputies protected us and sought out the shooter.  What is wrong with our country?  We didn’t have all this nonsense going on when I was a kid, and we all had guns, even us kids!  There was none of the disarm America stuff being pushed then and things were pretty calm.  No one suggested we needed to get rid of the “right to bear arms” guaranteed by the Constitution either.  We didn’t have kids taking over schools and shooting everyone. 

But it’s not just shooters at movie theaters and schools.  We also didn’t have hospitals like Boston Children’s hospital being aided by the Governor and the courts in kidnapping a 15 year-old girl from her family when different doctors disagreed on the origins and causes of her maladies (one blaming the parents for abuse, even though none was ever found.)  Sixteen months in captivity with her begging to go home to her parents, and the girl is still held by the government.  We didn't have doctors performing live birth and "partial" birth abortions either.

OUR government!  OUR professionals!  OUR neighbors!  What on earth is going on?  What has changed over the years to make our society so dysfunctional?

I have a theory, and it’s not a pretty one.  Besides the proliferation of drug use and lack of professional intervention for many of those who are mentally and emotionally disturbed, we have systematically withdrawn from our moral and ethical roots based in the Judeo Christian values and beliefs the country was founded upon.  We have turned over governance to those the corporations fund and control and the media fawns over.  We have granted to the government huge powers they were never intended to have.  We have allowed media and freedom of speech to enable widespread programming of our minds with values that don’t allow a healthy society.  We have learned to worship things rather than use them if we NEED them.  We raise our latch key children with video games filled with violence while both parents have to work to earn enough money to live the good life…or even to just survive.  (That is if there even is both parents present!)

President Obama campaigned for “hope and change.”  It was a clever slogan, but we are no better off.  Yet, America really is at a point where hope is hard to find and change is badly needed.  We continue to widen the gap between the “haves and the have nots.”  The poverty level here is higher than ever, and yet the wealthy are doing extremely well with a stock market that continues to climb to unheard of heights despite 10% unemployment (including those who have given up even looking for a job) and an economy that actually showed an unheard of negative GDP this month!  Like the wicked witch of the west said “I’m shrinking!” The upcoming generation has a bleak outlook.  The unemployment rate is over 50% in the growing number of high school drop outs.  College graduates are working at Starbucks and McDonalds just to get by.

Amid all this, we increasingly measure the health of our society by the things we own rather than the values we live by.  And I don't even want to start on this nonsense of trading five terrorist leaders from Guantanimo Bay for one army deserter.  I guess it’s true, the golden age of America was the 1950s and early 60s...unless we turn around and regain the values we once lived by.

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