God, Family, Country
I have tried to withdraw from the politics that are sucking the life from America. Yes CG, I truly have. Sideline sitting is difficult and leaving unsaid what needs to be said is even more trying. When you catch a glimpse of what Americans are hearing every day, it is disheartening and distasteful. Even when turning to the local news you are bombarded with the “national” segment extolling the virtues of one and the evilness of the other. But mostly the evilness of the other. Unfounded or not. This is certainly not an election where the candidates are appealing to the intellectual side of the electorate. Nor is it one where the media reports and compares policy positions. Maybe it is time we had a fight at this level so America can take a deeper look into her mirror. Maybe learn about our true deep divide. The real one that exists not between colors of Americans but between the political and media elitists and the everyman. It is the makings of a “French Revolution.” Pray it never comes to that.
Thinking through the self-inflicted political and cultural mess in which we find ourselves and writing about it is therapeutic. So allow me this indulgence.
Freedom once was, along with the quixotic “truth, justice and the American way”, the heartbeat of our country, but now it is politics. The absence of truth and justice is the new American way. Everything is politicized and idealized. There is no place to where one might retreat to escape it. Withdrawal into a cocoon is an option – a self-imposed safe zone. But, tuning out our shared reality so as to calm our troubled souls and shield our feelings is dereliction of our civic duty.
In our country, a war is on. It is political, ideological and cultural. It is a battle of Biblical proportions being fought for the soul of a nation and for the souls of her people. One world globalist vultures are aligned to pick clean the American carcass and consolidate her wealth amongst them. Open the borders and the millions who rush into the Promised Land will find naught but misery and slavery to their new global masters. Their hope ending right back in the ghettos, slums, poverty, and crime that drove them away from their lands to begin with. They will find the hope they placed in fallible utopians offering grandiose promises has also departed. Promises they held no intention of fulfilling. Could not possibly fulfill. Utopia is not for the masses. It is only for those shielded by wealth and power from the daily difficulties of the everyman – no matter where he resides. Geographically, there will be an America, but the shining beacon of freedom to the unfree world will be gone however, replaced by darkness. In the darkness, evil thrives. With the promised fundamental transformation completed, gone will be the uniquely American ideal of individual liberty and freedom first Exceptionalism – likely never to know a peaceful rebirth. Shockingly, some likely view that as success. After all, have we not been told that America is no more exceptional than any other nation?
These days, ideology preempts facts. Honest debate is stifled by mockery, name calling, gutter crawling and character assassination. Movements are built on falsehood, towns are burned, people are dead, police officers are vilified, attacked and murdered, the military is gutted and slighted, and the everyman is left standing without much hope amidst all of that and run down and dilapidated cities that were once great manufacturing centers and the envy of the world.
The people charged as the guardians of one of our most precious and important freedoms – speech and the press – have forfeited that freedom by selling their souls to political ideology and totally abandoning any semblance of objective journalism or news reporting. It is an ideology wholly antithetical to the principles on which our nation was founded. Along with corrupt politicians and their donors they are steering the rest of us toward destruction while not realizing that it is also their end toward which they are speeding. The type of ruling government their ideology perpetuates cannot withstand a free press.
Our children, the future, are ignorant of our history. Worse than that, they have been conditioned to believe that Western civilization and specifically America is to the blame for the world’s problems. More dangerous is their ignorance of the darkness of communism and socialism and the aims of Sharia even when displayed right before their eyes. This is the great failure of our education system, or the great success depending on your worldview. It may as well have been free for what it was worth.
Common decency and respect were thrown out the window long ago. The golden rule? Pull anyone with an opposing view down into the gutter and make it about that. The people? They remain largely ignorant of things important because they are too focused on media created soap operas and massive misinformation. It is a media that prefers to be owned rather than remain truthful, free and independent. With a corrupt media, corrupt Congress, corrupt administrative agencies and a corrupt Department of Justice including the full gamut of federal investigative agencies what possible chance is there for fairness for the everyman? Nil. Despots observing from around the world must marvel at how easy it was to corrupt the most perfect representative republic on the face of the earth and then turn it on the people that it was supposed to serve and protect.
Did you ever ponder how we got here?
© 2016 J. D. Pendry
Category: Politics
‘Everything is politicized and idealized.’
No, it is not. You need to stop watching television and crawl out of the cave into fresh air. Stop watching that crap on TV right now. I swear, you’d depress Mother Teresa!
I have better news than you do: whether or not you liked Dylan, he got the Nobel Prize in Literature for poetry last week. To quote him, ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ originated in ‘a long piece of vomit’ beginning with ‘steady hatred directed a some place that was honest’, ending with a kind of revenge. The chorus was a cry of defiance: ‘When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose’. He ‘thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick.’
You act like everything is cast in stone. Well, it ain’t.
I personally don’t wonder. We gave up the schools during the 60’s allowing the Left to slowly rise to power in academia. Now the left rules the schools – no wonder we don’t have a chance – the kids are all indoctrinated with crap from kindergarten on up.
When held up to scrutiny – their progressive dog squeeze fails – but when everybody is raised on a diet of it, it is hard to understand that Soylent Green is people…
Excuse me, in the 1960s? What planet are you talking about? It ain’t the one I grew up on, and the schools I went to IN THE SIXTIES AND SEVENTIES sure as hell were NOT distorting history or anything else, nor were they indoctrinating anyone.
You must be from a different planet. What solar system is it in? Can I find it with a telescope?
Yep. I graduated in 1965 and if a band member had taken a knee during the National Anthem the band director and principal would have taken turns kicking said members ass.
Ex-PH2, here have a Snickers, it will make you feel better. I think you may have rolled out on the wrong side this morning.
Gunner is in fact correct that the process began in the sixties. I taught for a very brief period in 1971 in El Paso where by then my teachers’ lounge conversation already sounded like something you’d hear around the water cooler at Pravda. I told my wife that if I didn’t get out of teaching I’d end up in prison for strangling one of those commie bastards. I shifted to military marketing where I was among my own, and stayed happily for thirty years.
I also think you’re giving JD an undeserved short shrift–he’s describing the world if you DO pay attention to politics, not if you ignore it as you suggest. Furthermore, he’s spot-on when he lays the major blame at the feet of a corrupt media that has sold it’s soul to the socialist devil. If they were doing their jobs, all the political corruption we’re witnessing would be so much more difficult if not impossible. JD’s also correct that it will be a brief victory for the media because the political movement they’re pushing is not one which tolerates free speech and free press.
There now, how’s that Snickers, hmm? Feel a little better?
10-4 Poet on the snickers.
Ex, I have to disagree with you on this one (still love ya, tho) the changes started in the 60’s (I graduated in ’69) and it has been slow, but relentless. We raised our son (born in ’81) to resist all the PC crap (while being respectful). Unfortunately too many parents abdicated the rearing of their kids to the schools.
OC, roger on the parental abdication.
Attend a Parents’ Night at the local school and you’ll find a handful of parents there. The kids whose parents never come are, usually, those whose parents have abdicated; excluding those whose jobs won’t let them be there but who are involved with their kids nonetheless.
Teachers spend way too much of their time having to do what the parents will not, the school administrations will not take the steps necessary to support the teachers against drop-out parents, and the kids loose out all the way around.
I was actually told (some 30 years ago) by the step-father of a boy I had to discipline on the school bus “I know he is no angel, but he would never do that.” The step-father would later call in a death-threat against me because I was, shall we say, a bit inflexible about the case.
Sometimes the kid needs 3 pops, and his parents need 10 each.
Ah Graybeard, I remember a time when any adult in town could give a kid a thunk upside the head for being a dick. And woe be that same kid when Dad got home from work.
(How the hell did Dad know that Mr. Jones from the other side of town had to give me a kick in the ass anyhow?) And we young’uns accepted it as gospel.
Yep. And among a certain circle of young folks in my hometown, it would not surprise any of them if I were to thwap them upside the noggin for misbehaving today.
But the thing is, none of them need it.
It’s funny because everybody is bemoaning the lefty communists who took over the schools but are you guys are also blaming shitty parenting. Did the hippies who took over the schools in the 60’s cause all this or did the brain dead parents cause it? Dochi demo ei deska? I agree with Ex. You guys are out to lunch with your 60’s commie school take over thing.
Because the commie’s and their “it takes a village” mindset, the constant (false) reporting of child abuse if one dares to swat their child in public, the propaganda that spanking is child abuse – and that’s the parents who actually care.
Then you have the Welfare Mommas, the step-“daddys” who are just there for when “momma” spread ’em while the sperm-donors are off making other contributions.
There are those who have been brainwashed by the lefties into thinking all that a child needs is a reasoned conversation – or no guidance at all ’cause they’ll turn out just fine.
Or the mother who could never stick with a man (or have a man stick with her – hard to tell which) who was asking the police officer doing an in-office safety training to go talk to her boy and scare him into behaving. (Honest – I was present at the conversation.) She had never had the intestinal fortitude to stop the boy when he was young, and wanted someone else to do the job she didn’t do – when the boy was in high school.
The socialist have destroyed many families. Destruction is what they do best.
W2 it is you who are out to lunch. Said with all due respect, of course.
Man, drink a beer with all due respect of course.
Graybeard, you said this: ‘She had never had the intestinal fortitude to stop the boy when he was young, and wanted someone else to do the job she didn’t do – when the boy was in high school.
The socialist have destroyed many families. Destruction is what they do best.’
What you describe is not socialism, it is simply bad parenting. Any parent who does not present him/herself as an authority figure from the get-go is a bad parent. When I see a father go up to his two squabbling sons and snap at them: ‘Boys, why are you fighting?’ and neither of them has an answer, and his recourse is to tell them to get into the car, and they now have extra chores at home and no hockey practice for a week, and I know he enforced it, that’s good parenting. You don’t have to smack or scare a kid into behaving. You do have to make it clear that you are in charge and what you say goes, period.
Parent who do not set rules and enforce them are weak, bad parents. My sister is one of those: wouldn’t stop her youngest from running around at a movie theater. Someone else had to tell him to go sit down and stay there.
I’ll go to the 50s as the starting point. The activist Supreme Court got the ball rolling and the 60s were awash in revolutionary bullshit, hippies, SDS, Black Panthers, cop assassinations, college campus takeovers, sit-ins, rejection of tradition and traditional values, and generational conflict. It just hadn’t all seeped into a unified agenda and hadn’t been institutionalized yet.
The late 30s and early 40s when the Frankfurt school assholes fled Germany to escape the Nazis and immediately starting running down America. Their writings are the intellectual foundation of the whole modern leftist movement.
Okay, Poetrooper, wrong again. A- I DO pay attention to politics and the corruption on all levels is tangible. So why don’t any of you people vote those buzzards out of office? Someone worse might take their place???? LAME, LAME LAME!!! BULLSHIT! The most corrupt politicians on the planet right now are Mike Madigan and Hillary Clinton, and there is a move underway to get Madigan ousted from his perpetual seat. B- If anything, it’s people who say ‘no one to vote for’ and don’t go to the polls to exercise their right to a secret ballot that contribute much more to the decline than anyone else. They don’t want to be bothered, but they sure do like to bitch. C- Changes happen all the time. Nobody likes changes, especially the ‘special’ people who think they are more important than anyone else when they aren’t. A rowdy town hall meeting where the corrupt idiots were dragged out of town behind a pickup truck, and dumped off at the nearest trackless wasteland would be a fitting way to handle them. D- (My favorite) Nobody is special, but a few loud, noisy, bad-mannered brats who get in front of TV cameras and hog all the TV time they can get have made it seem as thought THEY are the only people who matter. When we stop pandering to that ASININE TABLOID CRAP and teach kids proper manners, it might end. It is boring and ridiculous, and some day, it may just end because no one is watching it any more. Movies that don’t get an audience fade away to obscurity. E- Every politician since the world began has pandered to the empty minds and growling bellies of the lowest common denominator. NOT voting only makes them more powerful. If we don’t vote, we end up with Stalin or Pol Pot, or worse – a braindead moron who looks good in a suit. Oh, wait – we already did that. Remember? If the voting process produces corrupt slugs, then go stop them. If you don’t, they win. F- Every time someone starts with… Read more »
It actually began even before the 60’s, some of the stuff I was taught in the 50’s I found out was bullshyt…the communists came over here in the 30’s pushing their “liberal” shyt because they knew Americans wouldn’t accept communism, so along came the terms liberalism and socialism….and here we are folks, the retards among us, which points a finger and college pukes like the clintons, ate that shyt up!!
Well, then, maybe I just went to better schools than you guys did, because none of that PC crap was anywhere in Stephen Decatur High School or my own high school. None of it. If anything, it was ‘commies – all bad, America – all good’ and the Rosenbergs were heinous criminals for what they did. There was NO revisionist history being taught at any school I went to, period. The Soviet Union was the worst threat EVER, and WWII and Korea were not distant memories.
I guess my school system was GRRRRREAAT, and all of yours sucked the bag. PFFFFFFTTTTTT!
And stuff your offer of Snickers where the sun don’t shine.
A waste of a perfectly good candy bar. [grin]
I’ll take the Snickers if PH2 doesn’t want it.
Um, I do believe I was correct about your getting up on the wrong side today, Ex-PH2. Your unusual use of CAPS and exclamation points indicates you may be in somewhat of a foul mood today so I’ll just back off as I do want to remain your buddy.
Ol’ Poe’s been married 49 years this Friday so he knows when to just shut up and go write another silly piece for the Internet.
And I prefer my Snickers frozen so shoving it up my ass would make the damned thing too gooey and messy to eat, not to mention awfully damned uncomfortable until it assumed normal rectal body temperature.
Well, if it’s frozen when it goes up it wouldn’t be gooey…
just sayin’
Don’t fear the commie!
My point wasn’t that when you went to school it was bad. My point was even then the people that were in the Education community leaned left – and the people they guided into the education community leaned lefter. And the College programs slowly leaned even lefter. rinse and repeat over 5 decades and you get now.
Well, I will say this — my elementary schools (in the 1970’s) weren’t great in terms of academic standards, but they weren’t “Zinnified” in terms of ideological slant…the school plays were mostly patriotic and the history classes put the U.S. in a good light.
My high school in the 1980’s was a different matter. The anti-Western and leftward slants were palpable. And from what I read things have not gotten better.
Respectfully, I would say the intelligentsia of the high school world were trend-followers just as now and I would say a large majority bought into the whole leftist hippie/radical chic of the time because it was ‘cool’, and still buy into it because as what they know, they assume it to be true. Fact – when I get get invitations to the high school reunions they suggest I respond to the “People’s committee of the class of ’70”. (Another fact – I have not attended once in 46 years).
God is out. That’s sooooo 50s. Family is redefined and now means Mom, six kids by six different men, two women and an adopted daughter, or two men with a dog. Country? That’s a type of music and, in terms of this country, is something to be against.
It seems like everything that this country has stood for has gone straight to Hell over the my lifetime. Schools are cesspools of liberal/socialist thought and practice, religious beliefs (except for Islam) are under attack, traditional values, like family, country, truth and honesty are treated like used toilet paper – flushed down the shitter after being wiped on someone’s ass. Hell, it seems like you can’t have a civil conversation with someone without a full blown firefight breaking out.
What has happened to us? We have allowed the Left (media, Hollyweird, academia, politicians, etc.) to do anything to take this country and make it into a third rate power, at any cost. Many were wooed by Johnson, Clinton and Obama by promises of “free shit for everyone”, but at what cost? The Great Society – look at what’s happened to Black neighborhoods since it was enacted. NAFTA – where did all of the manufacturing jobs go to? Obamacare – How much had health insurance costs increased (if you still have a plan)?
None of the candidates running for POTUS this election are the answer – not a single one. Until someone steps up and comes forward with a plan, and keeps their promises, the decline in America will continue.
I say it’s much worse than what you describe. No individual will change much of anything. What we are faced with is a lack of institutional respect for law in a number of ways. When the DOJ and its FBI play the games they did with H. Clinton, the institutional integrity–or what remains of it–suffers. When a president is unchecked by Congress and openly says he will not enforce certain laws that were enacted by a Congress and signed into law by a predecessor, that’s spitting on the Constitution. When a Supreme Court is comprised of leftist lawyers whose pronouncements lay waste to precedent and distort the legal framework for case decisions in order to further a progressive agenda, we are in the shit but deep. The country is screwed without the rule of law, and we are more and more seeing that rule ignored by the elites. We have a violent history as a nation and a violent future awaits.
You make a good point, 2/17.
I am hoping that we can get back on course without bloodshed.
I hope we can get back on track as well. However, I am a descendent of two men who soldiered under a fella name George Washington a ways back in history and it’s in my blood to fight against tyrannical oppressors. My musket’s in the closet whenever the call goes out…
“I am hoping that we can get back on course without bloodshed.”
Agree 100%, but am a realist and see nothing/nobody on the horizon that/who will get the country back on course. We are at the tipping point as a nation. A strong President can do much to right the ship, but tremendous change must take place within the home, grassroots if you will. Failing that, I doubt it much matters who is President. This election is the most important in my lifetime and will determine if we regain our core values, the values which made us a great country, an exceptional country, or will continue the path to destruction. And, yes, we were/are an exceptional country. Frankly, I’m not sure an individual or even a party majority can turn the tide. How can what has become of us be undone by an individual or party? Especially true b/c the primary function of politicians is to be reelected. I do not feel the majority have at heart the best interest of the nation; they serve to further themselves. That’s MHO and I wish I were wrong. I despise Clinton and will vote Trump, in the hope he can somehow pull his own head out of his ass and win the election. I’m still waiting for the barrage of TV commercials he has promised. I see maybe one of his for each 10 of Clinton’s. Maybe, just maybe he can rejuvenate the country and change her course. But, like I said, I’m a realist. IMO …
It went to hell when they took God out of school, out of the workplace, out of parks, out of the public streets, when they thought it was just dandy to murder unborn babies, when queerdom was acceptable when Almighty God said it was an abamanation
“Sideline sitting is difficult and leaving unsaid what needs to be said is even more trying.” That’s true. My remedy is to leave the stadium. I can’t detach altogether, taxes, and such but, brother, I would if I could.
“Common decency and respect were thrown out the window long ago. The golden rule? Pull anyone with an opposing view down into the gutter and make it about that.” Well, hmmmm….. “John Adams is a blind, bald, crippled, toothless man who secretly wants to start a war with France. When he is not busy importing mistresses from Europe, he’s trying to marry one of his sons to a daughter of King George III.” —Jefferson supporters. “If Thomas Jefferson wins, murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced. Are you prepared to see your dwellings in flames? Female chastity violated? Children writhing on the pike?” —Adam’s supporters. “Goldwater’ speeches are waves of verbiage which have no clear-cut meaning and which resemble the written productions of schizophrenics.” “Goldwater and many of his followers belong to that unfortunate group of neurotic persons who would like to be dead in order to ‘get it over with’ because of their enormous pathological need to find an answer for everything … He resembles Mao Tse-Tung.” Goldwater is “authoritarian, megalomaniac, grandiose, basically narcissistic,” with an “infantile, magical manner of thinking and feeling.” —Fact Magazine quoting some of the 1,200 psychiatrists who pronounced Barry Goldwater mentally unfit to be president. “Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain…if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” —Push-poll during the 2000 primary, clearly suggesting that his Bangladeshi daughter was actually the product of an affair with a *gasp* black woman. Pretty much everything. —George Wallaces 1970 campaign for Alabama governor. Somehow even worse than that. —The 1991 campaign for Louisiana governor between a abjectly corrupt former governor and a Grand Wizard of the KKK. Etc. Etc. Etc. There has probably has never been, and never will be, a time when hatred — the most powerful and inexhaustible of political emotions — didn’t make politics, like much else besides, go round. The rich, foreigners, and oppression will always be hated more than the poor, one’s fellow countryman, or freedom (especially other people’s) are loved. To believe otherwise is to have forgotten… Read more »
“Did you ever ponder how we got here?” It all started with Reagan, the christian coalition, and their ends justify the means, win at all costs, scorched earth policies. The democrats have been very slow to pick up on those tactics. But it seems, in a case of poetic justice, like most of the scorched earth has blown back onto he republican side this year.
Joe. Good to see the asylum gave you your internet privileges back. Thanks for your insight. It means a lot. Really. Don’t forget, if you live in a state that permits you to vote, election day is November 8th!
Not the 28th?
No, Joe, you dimwit. It’s always the first Tuesday in November, which this year is November 8.
Look it up, dicksnot.
Obviously you are unaware of Trump telling his supporters to vote on Nov. 28th. It’s a joke Ex-PH@, it’s a joke. But I guess you’d have to be current on the news to get it.
I think he’s out on work release from the county jail, 2/17. Still as demented as ever, still as out of touch as ever. That’s our Joey.
“It all started with Reagan.”
Joe, may I suggest you read a little more about Lyndon Baines Johnson? I do believe his Great Society had something to do with much of our present condition. LBJ was correct about one thing though, he bought, signed , sealed and delivered, the blindly loyal bloc vote of American blacks for the Democrat party.
And the Mexicans. Don’t forget them!
Johnson the “johnson” of all politics, started this crap when he intimidated preachers and would not allow them to discuss politics from the podium….preachers used to keep America straight, they stood shoulder to shoulder with the minutemen…we have fallen a long way!!
Projection-not just for movie theaters.
“Did you ever ponder how we got here?”
Every. Fucking. Day.
“The democrats have been very slow to pick up on those tactics.”
What fucking planet do you live on?
Joe,
Go ask Monica’s ex-boyfriend’s wife how we got here.
Cocksucker.
The republican scorched earth policy predates Clinton by years. The republicans had perfected that style by the time Clinton came along.
Eat a fat bag of dicks, Joe.
Try FDR. Better yet, look at the Wilson presidency if you REALLY want to get to the root of the issue.
FDR is one of the very greatest presidents. When you think of what he got us thru…..
What’s more important? Trump’s idiotic trash talk about women or Hillary Clinton’s HUSBAND getting a blow job from MOnica Lewinski while he was on the phone with the Secretary of State?
Trump’s trash talk, or Hillary Clinton throwing her hands in the air over Benghazi and answering ‘what difference does it make’, when SHE KNEW SHE COULD HAVE DONE SOMETHING TO STOP WHAT HAPPENED?
Has there EVER been a political potentate – EVER IN HUMAN HISTORY – who did NOT have a line of women waiting to lay for him – EVER – all the way back to the Sumerians?
It has been no secret that men who are famous, rich, and/or powerful have always had women willing to sleep with them for any number of reasons.
Mick Jagger is way to ugly for any woman to want him for his looks, for instance.
That is one reason Billy Graham took so many precautions against ever being alone with a woman – even in an elevator.
This world is populated by flawed, sinful people. Every one of us. The lowest common denominator for a people is always ugly.
I don’t look for Trump to be a saint because I don’t see a sinless man when I look in the mirror. I don’t look for the Clintons to be saints, either. But the consequences of a Clinton Presidency have been spelled out by Clinton herself – and I don’t want that.
Trump may not be able to do all he says he wants to – but Clinton would continue to trample the Constitution.
Yes, indeed.
This seems somehow appropriate
I think I understand where you’re coming from, but…. Like ex-PH2, I was in Jr. High & HS in the 60s, graduated public school in ’71. For me, it was in Houston Tx – an ISD that I still thoroughly despise. I’m emphatically not a fan of public schools. Yet, we were taught history honestly as one can be at that age level. I suspect SSDG is referring to the removal of the Lord’s Prayer and the eventual decline of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools, and some of the education “experiments” that began about that time (open classroom concepts, anyone?) One thing I think is overlooked by the talking heads and their puppet masters is the role of faith in world affairs. The Left as a rule does not see one’s faith as being anything more than one’s preference for some flavor of icecream. In reality, one’s faith impacts every aspect of one’s life: how one treats other people, what one does when one meets with those who are hurting, and the choices one makes. Those from a Judeo-Christian faith have worldviews and actions markedly different from those from other faiths – and the consequences are what the U.S.A. has experienced as blessings in the past. Where we get distracted by the natterers, mislead by the medidiots, is in our perspective of the current state of the USA. For balance, I give two things from just this last Sunday: A young man in our church, born and raised in Cameroon but now working here, recently returned from D.C., where he got to see the monuments there, and read the inscriptions. He returned even more enthusiastic in his desire to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. When our pastor asked the congregation (in the worship service attended by the younger demographic of our church) who was optimistic about the future of America, two people raised their hands: two Christians from India who have immigrated here. Perhaps those from “outside” have a better view of the state of America than those from “inside” – not ignoring the issues, but seeing the… Read more »
‘we’ve bought the lie from the Left’ – no, I have NEVER bought into that bullshit and neither should you.
Expecting the government to do everything for you, including wipe your ass when you can’t do it yourself, is the emotional expectation of children who refuse to grow up and become adults in an adult world.
If they want to give up their rights and freedoms to be in the ‘cradle to grave’ syndrome, that’s their choice, but I do not, and neither to most other people.
We want our independence, our free choices, and freedom to come and go as we please. We despise being told by the Idiot Children in the crowd that we’re horrible, horrible people because we can take care of ourselves and we LIKE it like that.
If you take the barely 1% of the population that makes up the portion making the most noise about wanting all of this bullshit government overbearance, then the other 99% of us just wish the government would shut itself down for about 9 months out of each year and stop sucking money out of us, and leave us alone.
That’s in addition to mostly just pissing off those of us who pay the most in taxes.
If you can’t figure out what I’m saying, tough bananas. I won’t interpret it for you.
That “we” was a generalization which, like most generalizations, has exceptions.
You and I have not bought into that lie, but many of the American people have been misled by it to some degree: e.g. George W. Bush.
I prefer the White Rabbit’s instruction to Alice: “Don’t just do something, stand there!”
About the only thing left unsaid is someone yelling “YOU KIDS GET OFF OF MY LAWN!!!”
It’s the job of the old to criticize the young. It was ever so and it will be ever thus.
However each successive generation manages to find its way and move forward. We’re going to be fine. The things they will find important will be different than what we found to be important in much the same way as how we differ from our parents.
If nothing else you make me aware of the need to slow down when I instead want to rant, nothing worse than an old crank whining about the good old days…I sure as fuck don’t want to be that guy and I realize that I have at times already become him.
Thank you for a moment of serendipity, the sky isn’t falling and it’s time to stop listening to that god damn chicken little.
I have complaints, too, VOV, but I simply cannot get into the gloom-and-doom mindset that some people want to wallow in. If it’s SO bad, how come people are still going to baseball and football and basketball games? How come people are NOT buying everything online, and how come we aren’t getting mail that tells us, based on our grocery store purchases, we’re going to drop dead in our tracks?
None of that has been happening, none of that Big Brother crap is going on, and every time the Idiocracy crops up on the evening news, it is NOT going on some place where I live or shop.
I just do not agree that it’s all going to hell in a handbasket, because I know better.
I will answer you, Ex-PH2. Most people can’t see beyond the immediacies of their own needs and wants and take measure of the world by their own lot in life. Who cares what the Supreme Court is doing or not doing? Who cares what the president is doing or not doing or, for that matter, who cares who the president is? Things will work out. They always do. Tyrants can’t be elevated to power in this country. The apolitical lawyers in black robes will do their duty as the law requires, regardless of their personal views. The senate will always have the interest of the nation at heart when it considers legislation and conducts investigations. And certainly the House will do the same, with allowance, by design, for the representatives’ parochial interests. States will continue to operate independently of the Federal government, except as national security requires. What’s to worry about? So, how ’bout them Cubs?
Cubs WIN!!!
Oh, yeah – thanx, AirCav.
Most people here are old enough to remember this kind of talk during the post Vietnam / Carter era / disco duck time. America was in serious decline, we’re losing to the communists, the west is finished. Guess what, we survived and we’ll survive again regardless of who wins the election because we’re Americans. It’s what we do. Quit reading Breitbart and watching tv. This is a great nation inhabited by great people. Why would you even consider giving up on it? All this talk of America’s demise just makes out enemies that much stronger. Screw that. We should stand shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Americans and work to make the best life possible. The division, the animosity, the name calling is all a part of the fellow traveler’s game plan. Don’t give in and give up.
Fook that. I’m out if the Bitch is in. No hard feelings. They won. The good guys lost.
Do what you’ve got to do. My point was in my comment I made was we’ve been counted out before, and we may have stumbled once or twice, but we always came back stronger and better than before. No doubt we’ll prevail as a people regardless of who is elected.
I’m going to go to the public square and burn my voter’s registration card in protest.
My standard prescription for those who think that the USA (and/or the next generation) is going to Hell in a handbasket:
Attend a meeting of any of the following:
A Boy Scout or Girl Scout Troop
A Trail Life or American Heritage Girls Troop
A Venturing Crew or Sea Scout Ship
In some churches, the church youth and college groups are involved in ministries that are outstanding.
Our church caravans down to Houston monthly to minister to the homeless there – and there are hundreds of people, cross-generational, involved in that ministry.
Some of my grandkids go monthly to a nursing home to sing and minister to the folks there.
There is hope for the USA – just not in DC
Sorry, the Girl Scouts have gone full Hillary leftist.
My wife was a Girl Scout through and through. She has quit supporting then because they are all about Planned Parenthood, Republican’s evil, and all that crap.
The institutions that made America great have been infiltrated and corrupted. Don’t expect them to help bring the USA back to what it was. That has to be done by new organizations that haven’t been taken over by liberal BS.
Well, Instinct, I cannot argue with you there.
Back when Princess was in GS-USA several decades ago I was viewed with suspicion by the local GS-USA Council establishment because of my gender.
For that matter, BSA National has also gone leftist idiot on us. And is suffering a declining membership by trying to be all-inclusive/non-exclusive.
That said – on the local level, in the Troops themselves in my neck of the woods the leaders are still doing good work with the kids and teaching them the right way, despite the Organizational corruption.
It is an entirely different rant, and this is not the venue, but I lost respect for the BSA Council in our area (Sam Houston Area Council) more than a decade ago. They became a bunch of suck-ups for the money, and have not been “for the kids” but “for the numbers” for years.
My grandsons are in Trail Life now.
We are going to be looking into Trail Life for my munchkins.
Boy Scouts used to be about teaching boys how to do things like hunt, shoot, basically survive outdoors and learn the environment.
My brother-in-law’s BSA troop wouldn’t even teach them how to start a fire without matches. The dad’s handled all of that because “it’s too dangerous”.
So, if Trail Life isn’t out here we will just teach it all ourselves on our own.
Then I need to find something similar for my girls!
Last, but certainly not least, remember this: we have never had real dynastic succession in this country, no matter how hard the press tried to get that to happen. There was a reason to not let that happen. Go back and read about the dumb fuckery that got Marie Antoinette and Louis execited. and ditto the Romanovs.
The morons who wanted more Kennedys and succeeding generations of others as the heads of this government are unable to understand the real danger of dynastic succession. The framers of the Constitution knew what would happen if it was allowed.
We don’t have royalty for a good reason. We don’t need it. We’re better than that.
Joe:
“Did you ever ponder how we got here?” It all started with Reagan, the christian coalition, and their ends justify the means, win at all costs, scorched earth policies.”
Joe, you’re either on something or need to be. You don’t have a clue.
I’m not Joe, Chief.
I’m going to leave this bit of logic here, so that the more morose of you can have something else to grip about. This comes from a financial analyst whose observations are worth a look.
From his 10/10/2016 column:
‘The volatility in the currencies is not only related to the issues of Brexit. The greater concern is that the Federal Reserve Board has backed itself into a corner. The only way out seems to be that it must raise its short-term interest rates. It got a little relief when Friday’s payroll reports showed a less than expected gain in the jobs market. The shortfall was not enough to damage the claim that new US jobs still continue to show gains. That’s good news for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. However, the continued strength of the US Dollar going into this election resurrects the 16-year cycle correlation that favors a Republican presidential victory. That is, every 16 years the U.S. Dollar makes a high within 9 months of the presidential election when a Republican wins. This is that 16th year (as was 2000 with Bush Jr, 1984 with Reagan, 1968 with Nixon, and 1952 with Eisenhower). Every 16 years, the US Dollar makes a low too, and a Democrat wins. That was the case for Obama in 2008, and before that, Bill Clinton in 1992, Carter in 1976, Kennedy in 1960, and Roosevelt in 1944.’
I’ve checked the USD index for the last year and the last five years, as well as against other currencies. There was a USD high in May this year against the Eurodollar. The USDollar index has been up and strong for the past five years.
You can do what you like with this information, but if the strength of the USDollar is an indicator, I’m going with that.
The Russian and I volunteer a lot, including teaching 4-5 y/o to read. I ask what books they have at home. The answer is 90% + ‘none’. It’s very common to have 5 y/o who have no concept of the alphabet. They are unable to spell their own name.
We also volunteer within the school system, frequently assisting at open house for parents. It’s not unusual for a teacher with 20-25 children to have the parent of one or two show up to discuss their child’s progress. I saw ‘parent’ vs ‘parents’ b/c rarely do I see a man/woman together. Guess the parents can’t be concerned with the future of their child.
One would think with the barrage of b/s that has come from politicians over the years, the usual rhetoric of ‘no child left behind’ or ‘we need to spend more on our children’, this would not be an issue.
If money were the solution to this issue, we have spent enough such that every person born since 1965 or so should be a member of MENSA.
Money is not the issue.
We spend the second most in the world per pupil (behind Switzerland).-I’m talking K-12 here, not including post-secondary. Are we second in test scores? Is our dropout rate the second lowest?
Money is most certainly not the issue.
Lefties are happy that we spend so much because it keeps their minions employed and no one will stand against “more money for schools” politically, but better parental involvement in the education of children would be the critical factor. Of course since welfare disincentives marriage (but is somehow proof of lefty “compassion”), well that never seems to work out.
If we’re spending so much money on education in this country that the kids should be getting a solid footing for college, then why are so many families home-schooling their kids now out of pure disgust? And why is there a massive population of college freshmen who have to take remedial English and arithmetic in their first year?
Why? Because they aren’t being taught anything except how to pas standardized tests that are meaningless in the real world, that’s why. Get rid of the Common Core system and take the schools back to reading, writing and arithmetic. These kids can’t even pass a 6th grade arithmetic test that I took in the 1950s.
Word. And when the kids barely pass these standardized tests, all the teachers and politicians pat themselves on the back. It is a disgrace.
I talk to teachers in my volunteering, and the honest ones tell me that they teach the standardized tests, but in a way that gives them deniability. The bean counters with their creative new methods of ‘teaching’ are happy as they can point to some b/s statistic that proves the kids are learning. This in the face of data which show the US slipping worldwide in education. I guess when we fall behind Sudan someone will take notice and have some splainin’ to do. Or hire another thousand or so bean counters to study the problem. Their conclusion will be the need for more money and that they are unable to get additional funding b/c of the evil Republicans. And Bush. It will also be Bush’s fault.
The best teacher shut the door and tune out the administrative static, and focus on the kids. They know that with each new principal it will all change again.
I wish I could edit these comments when I fat finger it and misspell, which is often…. Should be “The best teachers” (plural)