The entire family will be here this week. It will be the first time in years all our five children will be here at once. As chaotic as it may be, I can’t imagine how it has been with my brother Ray and his wife Peggy. All 14 of their children showed up this weekend to celebrate Peggy’s 79th birthday. Think about that for a while.
With the family gathering I have begun to think how time has flown. Our three grown kids are all over 40 (Ray and Peggy’s kids range from 58 to 40). And with the passing of time, change has come to our world. It is not the safe world I experienced growing up in the 1940s and 50s when we kids were free to roam without restriction. That’s not the case so much these days. Parents keep a sharp eye on their kids, and there are many organizations where they are engaged and kept busy. We didn’t have those organizations – sports programs – in my era. We created our own games, did our own thing without any adult supervision.
I’m not sure I want to be around much longer in the world as it is today. There are so many things wrong with it. And nobody appears to be doing much about it.
One of the big things that stick out for me is the large amount of greed that has seeped into our lives. It’s unbelievable how everything is wedded to money. And the disparity between the haves and have-nots is growing wider and wider by the moment.
I was reading a piece in Time Magazine about Alan Simpson (Simpson-Bowles) and Grover “No Taxes” Grover meeting at the National Zoo – they are political enemies – and Simpson said something that really hacked me off.
Simpson was talking about the growing national debt, which he says will soon be at $21 trillion, and at some point soon he said, “… inflation will kick up and interest rates will kick up, and the guy who gets screwed is the little guy that everybody talks about all day and all night. The money guys will always take care of themselves.”
That’s my point. The haves will always come out good because they have the money, the will, the power and inside knowledge to do so. So no matter what, they will get theirs. And the middle class, the poor, they will not get theirs no matter what.
And that is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Until the poor and middle class rise up and say enough is enough that is the way it will continue to be. And the Republican party – the party of big business – will continue to help the haves get more and more of their share.
Grover does not escape this. In the same Time Magazine piece he says his goal with the no-tax pledge is to “… cut government in half in 25 years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
These are the people we and I have elected to help government govern?
If Grover would have his way, we would not have a government, and the Republican Party would take us back into the 1910s or before where women have little or no rights, and the rest of us would have to fight for survival on the mean streets.
Then there is this NSA spying thing and Edward Snowden. I for one minute don’t believe we are the only government that has taken advantage of electronic technology to spy on our own citizens, as well as the rest of the world. If you think otherwise, you are awful naïve.
It was Eisenhower who warned the danger from increased security to protect us could do more harm to our freedom than any other threat. There has to be a clear balance, and if there is not we risk the same freedoms we are trying to protect.
In light of 9/11/2001, this has been our government’s answer. Has it gone too far? Maybe. I’m not entirely sure. But to expect that this would not happen is, as I said above, naïve. If the government starts rounding us all up, it has gone too far. So far, that has not happened.
As for Snowden, he definitely is a traitor. He’s done more harm to our country than good, and I’m sure Russia and China are still giggling and high-fiving each other in glee over the leaks.
But to assume Russia and China are not doing the same thing is absurd.
The counter-revolution going on in Egypt should not be unexpected either. To have the Muslim Brotherhood in control – and it certainly was – after a free and democratic election was the worse possible thing for the United States and Israel, and the West in general.
Religion has no business running a country. And that goes for Iran. We have separation of Church and State in this country, and that is how it should be. The Muslin Brotherhood was taking Egypt down the wrong road, at least in my eyes. It would be a future danger to all, and I’m happy that it appears the Brotherhood will be at the least reduced down to a small part in the government.
You know, of course, for at least 1,500 years war has been fought between Muslins and Christians, and it likely started way before that, before the Birth of Christ. It’s an on-going struggle and for us Christians the thought of countries being controlled my Muslin thought is intolerable.
It is wrong to overthrow a democratically elected government?
Yes.
Is it wrong to hope the counter-revolution will stick and a more liberal government will emerge in Egypt that will not be influenced by the Muslin Brotherhood?
No.
Then there is this: Do you realize that the use of temp agencies to hire workers has increased dramatically in recent years in this country? Again, I was reading this in Time Magazine.
Companies like Wal-Mart – why is it that Wal-Mart always seems to be involved when it comes to screwing employees – use temp agencies to hire loads of people for its work. What happens is that these temp employees wind up getting paid less than the minimum and companies like Wal-Mart escape responsibility for it because the temps are not technically employed by it.
Part of the reason for the claims of rising monthly jobs by the U.S. Labor Department is because it can count these temps as new hires, even though they don’t get paid enough to escape the poverty level.
If Aaron Hernandez had been one of these temp workers and did what he has allegded to have done, we would not hear a word about him. But because he had a $40 million contract with the Patriots, he’s all over the news.
How does an athlete as skilled as he is do what he has been charged with doing?
Don’t ask me. I can’t kill a spider.
In the end all these things don’t really matter because in the end God rules, and He will have the final say. But it sure makes living in this world difficult for me. I see so much stupidity, so much greed that it makes me sick to my stomach.
Why can’t we all get along? Why can’t we do what is moral right without thinking how much money or power we will get from doing what is morally wrong?
What is wrong with us?
Be well pal.
Take care of yourself.
Have a great day.
You are loved.