Beware – LONG RANT for 2020 ahead
As we turn the corner on the year 2020, I was reflecting on how we thought the year 2000 would be so futuristic and advanced, but as all of you know, things didn’t exactly turn out so rosy…
The gap between the haves and the have-nots appears to have widened significantly with an ever-growing number of desperate homeless people on the streets. Be they veterans with problems, mentally unstable folks, or just those seriously down on their luck, most choose to look the other way. We do not take care of our own very well.
The overall civility of people appears to have degraded, along with the value of a person’s word, not to mention a pronounced lack of faith in the God that blessed us as Americans in the first place. His patience has its limits.
Witness the moral free-fall in our ethics and morals; just look at our entertainments to see what we value as worthy of our time, attention, and praise. Heretofore issues of gender, for example, once never even considered as controversial, have somehow crazily come under question.
Most people are mainly concerned with “what’s in it for me,” certainly not into the philosophy of “giving a little bit more than you’re asking for.” Selfishness and short-sighted instant gratification seem the order of the day. People will wrong you and quip, “So sue me.”
Nearly every major decision made is profit-motivated, damning the welfare of the populace, the environment, and future generations. When it is not profit-driven, it is power-driven by a select oligarchy who seek hegemony over media, resources and leadership for their own selfish goals.
So many are oblivious to what is around them, so self-absorbed in inane screentime, sheepishly mimicking what we hear from jaundiced media sources as gospel. Free and critical thought is perceived as subversive instead of inspiring — we are to be automatons, not human beings…the scripting of lessons taught in our schools and the one-size-fits-all philosophy is evidence enough.
American politics is the most divisive it has ever been, further contributing to the overall mistrust of and anger with government of any stripe or party, ever exacerbated by a media controlled by a few moguls promulgating their destructive drivel. If divide-and-conquer is the agenda of some unsavory conspiracy, they are halfway home.
The world in general is definitely not a safe place; there are few countries I would dare enter without constantly looking over my shoulder. We are ever inches away from a world war, a war in which no one wins — we would all lose and lose big.
Young people are sent thousands of miles away to fight and die, against an enemy that is more an insane theocratic ideology than a politic, an enemy that does not value life the way most of us do in the West. And I fear we have just seen the tip of the iceberg.
Einstein is often credited with “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Do we have the courage and wisdom to fix things? The answer is simple: No.
Though I give thanks for the miracles bestowed upon me every single day of my life, I know our world does not have blue skies ahead. So glad I got to live and grow up in a much better world than we have today.
Give thanks for what you *do* have.
For now.