Kanook – Tlingit Nation

September – 2010

The Great Seal

A little over 234 years ago a group of individuals meeting as the Continental Congress in
Philadelphia declared the United States of American as a nation. Since that time the U.S.A. has
grown to be a well-respected, admired and feared major power on Earth. It has fought and won
some terrible conflicts, one internally that split the nation to such a point that few ever believed it
would survive as a solid nation, and international wars that threatened the freedom of the world.
Over time it has become to be known as the policeman of the world and at other times the helping
hand providing resources and guidance when other nations faced calamities and internal strife.
In square land miles it is the 3rd largest nation on the globe, and with a population over 310
million there are on average 81 persons per square mile, compare this with the State of Alaska the
largest state in the Union with approximately 1.19 persons per square mile, or China at 353
persons per square mile. The U.S.A. is the world’s most ethnically diverse and multicultural
nation, a product of its open arms policy during its early years, making it the land of opportunity
for immigrants across the planet all searching for a better life. It enjoys, even during these
depressing economic trails the world’s largest economy and a middle class equal to none, with a
total purchasing power in the trillions of dollars.
Unfortunately right now the “Land of the Free” is stumbling around, as is the rest of the world,
in a wrestling match with the economy. The events brought about the housing crash a couple of
years ago are proving harder to recover from than most expected. The housing market, boosted
by speculators on a grand scale collapse for a number of reasons, not the least being the large
scale trading in what is know as derivatives, a five-dollar word that was simply a gathering of
housing mortgages assembled in currency folders and pushed out into the financial marketplace.
To drive the number through the ceiling credit was created where credit should not have be born,
this in part a goal of the Federal Government in their push to achieve the all-American dream that
every Tom, Dick, and Harry owned his own castle. “Not to worry,” the banks said as their credit
regulations relaxed to a point that zero-down loans became the action of the day, this coupled
with interest only payments for a set number of years, and the trickling of jobs from the
manufacturing sector to cheaper labor markets across the world.
As the labor pool shrunk the individual loans packaged in the financial folders floating around
the world began to fail, beginning as a trickle and morphing into an avalanche that banks could
not absorb, along with some pretty big lending houses. The US administration decided that some
of the big houses could not be allowed to fail, including the federal insurance companies that
backed a good majority of the bad loans. Foreclosures across the continent multiplied like
dandelions on a new lawn after a spring rain. CEOs and board members ran about screaming the
sky was falling, automobile manufactures caught the disease, dining out became less fashionable,
customers at retail stores stayed home, as the unemployment rate rushed toward 10% - the end
was in sight.
The government borrowed stacks of greenbacks, their first truck load to the banks and large
home mortgage insurance concerns, the government then created a multibillion stimulus package
for the working man, which in fact was meant for him only if you believed in Santa Claus or the
Tooth Fairy.
The big boys on Wall Street and some closed mouthed money guru’s today are patiently
waiting for a market correction, they’re praying for a normal correction – their knees all cutup
and bruised from hitting them every other hour or so. The aggressive speculators will lose big
time when it happens, if they haven’t already lost their shirts – these same tornado guys, even
though they only account for less than 1% of the people that had been buying real estate had
driven the housing market prices through the roof, in most cases doubling or tripling the price of
a piece of property.
Back a few years ago when the market was sailing along when the hardcore speculators were
buying and selling property, their MO was to search for deals, snap them up like good cookies
and march on. In doing this they killed the lower-end of the market forcing others who were
looking for a “home” to pay a much higher price – whereas the speculators had purchased low
and were selling high. The housing market was over inflated to a point that when the loans were
let, in some cases to not-so-good credit risks, that when they failed to meet their payments and the
lending institution foreclosed – they foreclosed on property that wasn’t worth the value of paper
issued against it. The stockholders of the lending institutions who bought into the derivative
scheme sold by the institutions were looking at the future and saw their investment going south.
Caught up in this were super large pension funds, such as various states, unions, hedge funds and
401k deposits, now all tickling the bottom of the pit and singing the blues and blaming the catch-
all for the big mess due to their own greed and corruption, the government.
Reminds one of the condition, to where a group of women can get together at almost any
location of the globe and whisper deep-dark secrets to each other, have a man try and join the
bee-hive and they shoo him away under the pretense of “girl-talk”, turn that around and have a
group of the male of the species tell a women who wants to join it is “man-talk”, and the famous
walls of the house of discrimination shake and shutter with a woman’s indignation and wrath, so
is found the high-market money rollers who have treated their schemes and financial tricks as
women talk, and when dragged before those outside of their realm have screamed and stomped
their feet in unison.
When you peer behind the major cause of our present situation you see that the primary cause
of this “crash” was the fact that nearly 100% of the bad debt is based on an inflated value of the
loans issued, this coupled with super-relaxed attitude towards credit.
On the surface it appears, to the home owner, that the solution is simple…have the mortgage
holders forgive a portion of the interest due on the loan package, bringing their obligation to
within a reachable objective. If only it were that simple, albeit might have been if the original
owner of the loan was still the primary hold of the loan, most are not whereas the loan in being
packaged and then sold in the financial marketplace they have been marked up and issued under
“top secret” investment portfolios that even the SEC or Banking Laws cannot open.
The world economy has witnessed the collapse of many credit companies whose customers
cannot fulfill their obligations on their debts, this condition has spread over to the stock market,
although real estate prices are slowing falling there are too many to count small businesses that
have slipped through the cracks. And in some cases, large companies are beginning to fracture
into smaller companies in order to survive, and in the growing mess millionaires and some
billionaires have filed bankruptcy when their total assets fall under the real value of the debts they
have on their books, while a select few who being prudent have kept their debts manageable will
only increase their wealth.
The person in the street has by now lost a sizeable chunk of their investments, the
unemployment percentage is still a fraction below 10%, the unofficial number is kicking the top
step of over 15% - I would venture to state that the economy will continue to stagnate, this
despite all the actions of the governments around the globe. Albeit there might be none in your
neighborhood soup kitchens such as the one’s we had in the Great Depression are on the rise, the
homeless numbers are increasing and you fool yourself if you believe this is just limited to the
United States or even North America. Just as you have convinced yourself that are current state-
of-affairs is the product of a single group or enterprise, we have been slowly working our way to
this collapse for the last 50 or more years.
In our race towards the future we have created a culture of “fast and convenient”, not that this is
a bad idea, although we haven’t paid too much about maintaining all the aspects of our
environment – this will soon manifest as huge expenditures that our society cannot pay. Look
around you, even the simple journey to the grocery store will reveal that our infrastructure is in
disrepair, whereas our bridges, dams, roads, and water and sewage treatment plants have passed
or approaching their life expectancy. The average household is living far beyond its means with a
net worth that is negative rather than positive based on the debt load. Property taxes are
overloading the homeowners, and inflated mortgage payments are draining any wage increases,
where 25 years ago a two-income family was living on easy street today they barely make it from
payday-to-payday, leaving them little or no excess dollars to stuff in the coffee can in the
backyard…if one of the partners suffers a sickness their entire life turns into a Hollywood
nightmare.
Major corporations are in dire straits, not the least of which is their board members and higher
management raking in millions of dollars per year in compensation even as their bottom line
tanks, in the meantime they suck up government stimulus funding and lay off hundreds of
workers without flinching. Some have dipped into corporate retirement funds of their loyal
workers cleaning them out, creating a climate of well-earned distrust while enhancing their own
pocket books. The sad part is that our government who holds the man-in-the-street accountable
for their actions does little to tap on the shoulder’s the higher-ups in corporate America or the
company they represent holding them accountable for the rape and pillage they have
commissioned. What used to be a considerable amount of funds in corporate accounts and
retirement funds are no more, whereas we punish petty criminals to the full extent of the law,
white collar criminals along with major crime bosses receive sentences that border on Comedy
Shop rules.
Trivial lawsuits have to be reduce, one step would be to make lawyers responsible for dragging
cases to court that are groundless, where “hurt feelings” are not a reason to sue – come on, the
people themselves need to take responsibility for their own actions and not drag their neighbor
into court if you accidently trip over a rake they might have forgot on the sidewalk. Some believe
today that a reduction in “tort” action means that 31-flavors won’t carry that particular flavor of
Ice Cream in the future.
On the other hand crimes that we believed unimaginable a few years ago are ripping our society
apart, crimes that our legal system is failing to address due to the archaic laws on the books. It is
possible to steal the identities of thousands of people in one afternoon, siphon off untold amounts
of their credit, savings, checking accounts – and our system slaps them on the wrist marking them
as “white collar” criminals – think about it, some people commit suicide when they lose a
substantial part of their life – it is “murder” not a simple “white collar crime”.
Contributing to the mess is the numerous amounts of “entitlements” the US Congress hands out
each year, whereas the Republicans want to examine the Social Security system and make some
changes while they hand out buckets full of taxpayers money in a program here are there within
their electorate in hopes that they will purchase another year in our Nations Capital. The
entitlements have helped in our slide into debt, we now are indebted to countries that are more
than a little hostile towards the United States – and even the man-in-the-street knows you cannot
have a “sane” foreign policy when your adversaries hold an economic hammer over your head.
Our leaders have got to realize, as their voters do, that we cannot solve the nation’s problems by
throwing money at people who do not know how to use that money to its best advantage, as
common sense will tell you this practice only gets worse when the individuals in question misuse
the money to increase their personal wealth.
Public and personal debt isn’t our only short fall, our educational system is the pits, this
generation is far behind the previous generation, and that one far behind the general education of
the one previous to that. Our intellectual worth as a progressive society had dipped lower than
anytime in our 236 year history – the replacement number for engineers and scientist’s is lower
than even an adjusted “bell curve” can accommodate and if we all don’t wake up soon and find
some concrete methods to reduce or dependence on a petroleum based economy our future looks
pretty dim.
We have lost control over our borders, a fact we can no longer accept, whereas we are fast
approaching a 5% undocumented population – some proposed a unilateral move to grant amnesty
to over 12 million illegal immigrants while other propose building higher walls, supporting them
with unmanned drones and millions of cameras’ and some well-placed field pieces.
Riding shotgun to all of this is the division developing amongst the population where no matter
who is the leader of the country the majority of Americans will not follow them or for that matter
consider any proposals they make as being pure BS. They question everything they say or do,
they roll over and play dead when asked to participate in a meaningful discussion their brains
wrapped around a steadfast position that even God would not be able to change. If they do
engage in a discussion they talk over the other participant pushing and shouting their concepts
high in the air not listening to their opponent’s position. It makes no difference if they are
Democrats, Republicans, Conservatives or Liberal’s; the constant battle between the opposites
has resulted in our form of a fractured government that is doing nothing.
It isn’t bad to question a leader, in fact it is what our form of government is based on, but there
are times when being a good follower is important – consider an army where every soldier
questioned every command laid at their feet – whereas when the order came to march they’d all
stand around wanting to know why they were marching and too where – examining every detail
of the planned march, and if they perceived their might be some danger involved would argue for
countless days demanding more information, and like today if something bad happened when
they were standing around doing “nothing”, they’d blame their leaders. Imagine an undisciplined
army walking into battle against one that had bucket loads of discipline, the only way they’d
survive is as “prisoners of War”, and yet almost to a man they’d blame their leaders as being
incompetent.
We face a similar condition today, we are under economic attack from every quarter, the Far
East, Europe, the Middle East and South America, and on top of this we have “fundamentalists”
who want to push their brand of faith onto us with force if necessary.
Our society has fractured into social groups that have disjointed goals and values, whereas the
groups have become increasingly polarized to a point were “consensus” has become impossible,
as a matter of fact we are setting ourselves up for a grand example of social paralysis allowing for
our conquest by a vibrant regime financed by a select few. Today you’ll find “each” group
convinced that the other group(s) suffer from some serious “moral” flaw and argue against them
based on the “perception” of that flaw, the end of one group is a result of exploiting their
weakness and perceived flaws. We find today trainloads of innuendos, false charges, and too
many rumors to count – all of this based on whoever has the loudest voice and the deep pockets
of those who will benefit from the BS.
Instead of spending their time jockeying for the next election our elected officials at every level
should be examining our standard of living, paying attention to its technology, medicine,
economics, religion, natural event and over social factors the population interacts with on an
hourly basis – in other words are we moving forward or backwards. Is our culture being shaped
for the future or torn apart as it drifts backwards, is our technology undermining religious beliefs
and how is it being shaped by outside forces from foreign lands.
 One of the categories that worries me is the fact that as we move forward this generation has
seemed to lost touch with our past, whereas any culture that is moving forward has to make some
difficult decisions and without understanding how our past is constructed we are not only not
learning from our mistakes, we are failing to understand what decisions were made that created
the mistakes. More than just looking at the mistakes, they have to be dissected and fully
understood why they were made, where a majority peering back into the past will more than
likely hate those past decisions and feel that our culture is based on a set of lies or mass
falsehoods – this is all part of learning.
Even the founding fathers of the United States are looked at in a different light, for example
Thomas Jefferson, who wrote one of the most amazing documents of all time, is viewed as a
classical hypocrite of his time in that he wrote for the equality of all men, yet he had a household
full of slaves, these fellow American’s are basing their bias on there surroundings today not
realizing that is has been only since the late 1800s and 1900s that the attitude towards slavery has
changed, it’s called progress.
Scholars more educated that I say that without a clear understanding of our history, the
generation today is marching towards the future with a loss of faith creating obstacles that will
diminish our success in reaching it in one piece. Since the USA has decided to participate in
world affairs on a level that goes beyond wars and insurrections, the society as a whole must
create time to embrace the cultures of other countries. Our elected representatives, along with
their electorate must learn what is acceptable today vs. what was acceptable in a cultures history,
without this our country will continue to make life threatening mistakes as it bumbles along
through our world with an attitude that whatever we do is acceptable by other cultures, believe
with all your heart this old way is no longer acceptable, and with the access to information that
we have today there is no excuse for stepping out-of-line in another foreign land.
Not to be comparing Grecian or Roman Empires to the United States but I often wondered if
they too viewed their history with disdain and distrust. Some scholars argue that Rome in its later
years looked outside of Rome for their values, whereas everything non-Roman became better
than Roman, I find it interesting that many of the same do not draw any historical perspective to
why this was so.
Here in the United States, for an example of diverse thought, the “sanctity of life” where there
is one extreme that believes that taking a life in never acceptable, another see many circumstances
in which it is, one group that is pro-life, against the death penalty, and anti-war represent another
extreme. Another bunch that is pro-choice, for the death penalty, and believes that using the
military to protect national interests is one other extreme.
 Many of us are divided on these issues, with a large number who are pro-choice at the same
time being anti-war and another group with directly opposite choices, whereas they can claim the
same position as they are pro-life, and the choices in the end or a mixture of each to that at the
end of the day it is difficult if not impossible to get a clear snapshot who is in the majority as
everyone is counting everyone else two or three times – tell me what would be the value of that
poll? Now when you extend that same scenario out into other situations such as economics,
business, welfare, individualism, religion, international relations, immigration, crime, and health
care what do we end up with – you got it Jack – chaos! All and more of the above has become a
never-ending argument in the news, amongst politicians – in some cases the argument turns
vicious at the drop of the hat. It doesn’t help our society when we have overweight, loud-mouth
pundits leaning breathlessly over a microphone in some steel clad network building injecting their
super biased views over free-space driving the bitter wedge deeper and deeper into the man-in-
the-street craw, but then again we live in the Land of the Free. In other words, get a grip, we are
as far away from having a leader that represents a majority position simply because we don’t
appear to have a majority in any one position, other than if the leader fails to walk on water and
then the majority is to condemn the leader at his or her every step. Then each individual who has
an opinion other than the leader pre-judges them based on his or her political position if they
counter the individual’s position unfit for the elected office. Why? Well its simple, it is evident
that the official has an incorrect position, and isn’t it true if the official in question has a different
opinion than they are of a lower social standard, stupid, evil or a combination of either. Lately, it
seems the leaders of our land being classified in either or position at one time or the other or even
most of the time are stupid or evil.
Consequently we have a completely ineffective government, where everything gets half-done
and even at that 50% or more of the population is dissatisfied with any portion of the action, if
you were sitting off on Mars watching what is happening and a student of our planets history the
natural conclusion would be that the USA is setting itself for the emergence of a dictator. Some
fear either a rightwing radical group, while others believe a leftwing radical group would really
turn our country on its ear.
A comparison is drawn with reference to leftwing radicals dominating a society whereas
communism ran amuck when they ousted the Czar in Russia, and that animal rights activists
routinely engage in terrorists acts, to the fact that the group is hardly compared to a rightwing
group – and that most of society is a little afraid of those who chase a Utopian society. While the
other side of the stream compares “conservatives” to a flock of Bible thumping thugs bent on
converting anyone and everyone to their religion, believing their strategy is to run about burning
witches. Before you roll on the floor, this is a common mistake where being conservative is
linked with the fanatical religious right, albeit they might have a few common traits they are not
the same.
The key factor is not to confuse a conservative with a member of the radical right, whereas a
conservative isn’t for a God fearing nation in which non-believers are prosecuted by the law.
They’d rather have people chose the religion of their choice worship as they desire, all on their
own “free will”. If a conservative chooses a religion, be it Christian or otherwise they don’t want
themselves or other conservatives to be treated as a villain in doing so. For example in the United
States, which is predominately Christian and has been since the country’s founding, would like to
pray before a major event, or place a symbol of their faith in a public area – in other words they
don’t want crosses that have been in-place for more than fifty years removed just because
someone or some group has found a symbol of their faith insulting. Conservatives, once you
separate the chaff from the members that tickle the edges around reality don’t really care how the
people practice their particular brand of religion, believing that basically people who respect and
honor the concept of a higher-authority will be honest and respectful of society.
A conservative is basically against drastic changes, where they’ll admit that things may not be
exactly fair, but that any correction should be a minor or gradual tweak to the system and not the
elimination of the system – this is the real definition of a conservative. In other words, it isn’t that
they are pro-war, pro-business or anti-gay, they just don’t want radical change in how things have
been done in the past.
It is the liberals that most often appear as forcing change, whereas if a person has a business
this person feels they have the right to hire whom they choose, and not have to structure their
workforce to satisfy some equal opportunity criteria – which in fact has done more to harm the
rights of minorities by placing an emphasis on their position in society. Whenever any group sets
up rule and regulations to dictate the actions of another group, the group left out of the
regulations are harmed or eliminated from the process accents the group the regulation or change
that is meant to benefit. The conservative member of society in picking a person for any
particular position believes that the person chosen should be picked based on their ability, not
their race of the color of their skin.
This is not to say that conservatives are entirely right. Where some of their opposition to
change allows civil injustices to continue, keep in mind that it is the conservatives predictably are
most always the last group who want radical changes in the American political system. Probably
most of you will debate my description of conservatives, in today’s atmosphere of political
differences this I accept as it is too easy to group those who oppose change with those who want
to return to traditional values – in particular to those against change who want to hide behind their
motives as returning to traditional values.
In my opinion it is the far left that is more likely to overturn a government, and that there are
more people wandering about who consider they are “liberals”, when in reality they should be
classified as a “realist and a moderate” and that when asked of their position in our government,
given the time to digest the question will reply: “I believe in democracy, as I recognize that there
are injustices, excesses, and problems, but I think that they have to be solved in a sane rational
process. Naturally this takes time, as I am willing to make changes, but those changes have to be
supported by data to back up the supposition that the change will produce the expected result.
Changes have to be introduced as a result of significant planning and consideration.”
Some would jump on this definition as saying this is a “conservative” position, I disagree,
whereas the definition accepts that change is necessary along with an opinion that our leaders
should actively seek change. In other words, they should under the request of the populous that
put them in office, constantly seek out injustices, excesses, and problems that have become
inherent with the system with time. The changes that come about towards solving them must be
“without” the introduction of different injustices, excesses, and problems.
Poverty is an excellent example where our society has shoveled dump truck loads of money at
it over the past ¾ of a century – and yet despite the availability of housing, food stamps,
education programs, tax incentives for business development, equal opportunity laws, and too
many to mention other social programs there are still neighborhoods that have slipped deeper and
deeper into poverty. Their crime rate increasing, drug use, alcoholism, unmarried mothers, high
school dropouts, and extremely high rates of unemployment, a never ending cycle that our
solutions have not being able to solve.
Some in our society, especially in community outreach programs, believe the underlying cause
is that they are just “poor” and view their situation as hopeless, and that the enclave of residents
haven’t had the opportunity to escape the cycle of poverty…when in reality this is a symptom and
not the real problem.
I believe our society is missing a big point, in everyone’s life in particular the poor there are
eight-years of life that is critical, they being from age ten to eighteen. Two of those years are
exceptionally important, when they are from fourteen to sixteen. Bad decisions during those years
normally establish the pattern that locks them into a life of poverty, as it happens two years where
their hormones are running amuck – and patterns are constructed that push these young adults
from being good kids to bad adults. In the beginning they have great potential, then drugs slip
into their lives, girls get pregnant and dropping out of school is the fashion, whereas kids that
were pulling down A’s and B’s in 5th and 6th grade become C and D students in 8th and 9th grade.
By the age of 18, drug use, unwed mothers, and high school dropouts have eliminated all possible
avenues for a prosperous future. Opportunity was not lacking, they themselves have slammed the
door on opportunity, addressing the problem one runs smack into massive amounts of cultural
abuse, usually from their immediate family and close friends – regardless of the source from
within the community the abuse suffered by these children is devastating and lasting. For
instance, they are constantly subject to entertainment that, depending on their race, usually paints
the more affluent neighborhoods as keeping them under the thumb of poverty, today in most
cases they have been raised in a single parent household with a parent either in a low-paying
occupation or on welfare, in other cases abuses or lack of attention by the officials their parents
elected has turned their neighborhood into one of drug dealers and pimps, and the list goes on.
The life of a child is supposed to be filled with adventure, where they experience growth,
change and vibrancy – life for adults can also be varied, especially when they have children and
experience the challenges and adventure once again through the lives of their children. To soon
the child is experiencing old age whereas life is filled with the aches and pains as their body
begins to loose its vitality – their days now stuffed with trips to the local clinic, funerals of their
old friends and some into a nursing home slotted into a day-to-day existence with an occasional
visit by their families, if they’re lucky enough to have a family. The life of the poor normally
ends at a young age if they wander a bit off of the path of life, unfortunately the children of the
“tribe” lose the benefit of an elder sitting at the dinner table spinning tales of wonder and
guidance on how to approach life and any knowledge they could have gained is lost and they
must venture out into the world unprepared for the “little” things in their life.
To attempt and sit down with an expert in the field of social practices and ask them to nail any
specific problem on the head is impossible, since they don’t have a clue. It has taken since the
late 50s to reach the point we’re at today – 60 years of neglect and hiding our heads in the sand
when it comes to working with a growing problem – the problem we have today is that in this age
of popping a pill to solve this or that ill in the least amount of time is not going to solve the
problem of poverty running amuck in our backyards, with the popping of a pill or a truck load of
borrowed greenbacks.
It isn’t as if we haven’t addressed the problem, I’d bet good money that there are not too many
political debates in this grand country where a discussion on poverty hasn’t turned in to an
emotionally charged event. From this one problem there are arguments over civil rights, drug
use, prostitution, religion, and economic policy. It is very apparent that most of the solutions are
half-measures because they don’t address the real underlying cause, which most will agree they
haven’t the data to available to support any type of solution – in other words they do not or
cannot identify the basic underlying cause is – most agreeing that there is a problem and off-
handedly point to a multitude of issues and go on their way.
Liberals are quick to point their fingers at “big business” as the major force that is driving the
world forward into this economic mess, whereas rich men and women are motivated by unbridled
greed and don’t pay no-never-mind to the poor in their moves to increase the size of their bank
vaults – naturally the poor say that “big business wants people to be poor”. Which rings as being
more than stupid when you think about it as poverty is usually associated with the unemployed,
with a great majority of poor people being unemployable! In other words, the poor are not
making a contribution to society, not even providing “cheap labor”, consequently they have no
purchasing power and the thought that having huge populations of poor people who can’t afford
new cars, new homes, new appliances, or common everyday services does nothing for “big
business”. In fact the “big businesses” that pay taxes see their contribution to the operation of
society being siphoned away to pay massive amounts into programs for the poor, this instead of
their taxes maintaining the infrastructure that directly impacts the profitability of their company.
One other item comes to mind behind the slow spiral toward mediocrity of our land is the
direction in which morality has turned, a film in which more than a dozen people get chopped up
by a man with a chainsaw is rated “R”. You watch limbs falling off, blood gushing from slit
throats, and cannibalism without social outcry. Yet if two people in the act of loving, a natural
biological act of mammals it is rate “X” and sometimes “XXX”, whereas two people who are in
love are put in jail who are of the same gender, whereas two of the same gender loving each other
can spend more time in jail than a guy that holds up a convenience store with a gun. In our
society most view evil as entertainment and love as obscene – in this most people shun the act of
love and hang steadfast to the idea that Puritan values are best, while the same person flaunts the
evil around them as an example of way things are – and remark that “it is the way the world is” so
get used to it buster and learn to adjust! Whereas love or better yet sex is not immediately
threatening to them so they feel they can at least control that, and leave the multibillion dollar
industry of violence off-limits.
Granted the biggest fear of our species today is an act committed behind closed doors by those
of the same gender, this just drives the religious radical right and left up the wall, some
committing crimes that go unpunished under the blanket that their religious freedom is being
violated and it is against God’s way…no matter that God hasn’t said a thing other than it is not
right to chase after your neighbors wife or husband.
 In our not so distant past this nation of immigrants created some pretty amazing things, electric
infrastructure that made its way across the land along with telephone lines, railroads crisscrossed
the landscape along with highways as far as the eye could see, automobiles rolled across those
highways in numbers today that no-one could have imagined, airplanes were invented, all of
which created methods that allowed the population to move from coast-to-coast along with goods
that allowed a migration from the rural regions into growing metropolitan regions. For what
seems today a minimal investment, the dreams created by this investment made the United States
a place to live that was and still is the envy of the modern world – people went to work, bought
homes, educated their children and embraced life with open arms. Some liberals look at people
such as Bill Gates and see only his personal wealth, they don’t see the long hours he and his
partners spent in a little warehouse at the south end of Lake Union in Seattle eating stale Mickey
D meals, or the creation of wealth that allowed his employees to purchase homes, fancy cars and
what-have-you, this along with the investments they made in their community or other startup
businesses that with hard work grew into multi-million dollar operations employing an expanding
workforce, all from a few dreamers working long-hours to meet the demand of an industry that
had not been fully realized at the time. They see his wealth and dream of ways to accumulate
money, and speculate on ways to suck money out of the establishment without paying their dues
of our progressive society.
Unfortunately one of the drawbacks our modern society we have inherited is the loss of the
small-town atmosphere, where once upon a time generations of family lived together in a single
town. Today this is a rare exception, which when you peer past the glamour of jetting across the
globe, you see the result of generations learning from the proceeding one. How does one learn to
grow old gracefully without an example? Who will be there to remind the upcoming group that
retirement comes much sooner than they can believe? Who will be there to remind you that you
did the same things as your children did when you were slinking behind the barn or net shed
sucking up a cold one. Today the answer is no one! The key to the future lies in the past and for
those of us who live separated from our parents, that key is denied us. For those of you who still
maintain that family feature, you’re lucky rejoice in your luck and grow with the valuable
insights offered up on the plate of life, albeit there are changes in our society from the last one,
the basics remain the same. From the old we hear the sad tales of the times that they wished they
had stopped and took a whiff of the roses, take notice, these tales are not just stories to get you to
enjoy life…these are memories of someone who has walked the life and is making what they
know is a vain attempt in making sure you enjoy your life, just as their parents or grandparents
tried when they harped at them. The often heard, yet seldom paid attention too phrase, “youth is
wasted on the young,” is just not a cute phrase to slap you around with – it’s real. And
remember, it is a grandparents’ assignment to spoil their grandchildren, just as it is the 3-year-
olds job to sit on grandpa’s lap and ask them if he still loves grandma – its all part of it. We have
grown in leaps and bounds during the past century, not all of it to our benefit!
A great many of our population look to our government in the increasing role it is playing in
our life and are afraid, not for the obvious reason of control, but for the simple fact that less and
less of our society is thinking for themselves. Government is meant to serve one major function,
to provide for the protection of its population and the land they live on – it is not meant to be the
primary employer of the society – compare this to employing yourself to take care of your home,
cleaning, cooking and running the household. Soon, if you were living off your nest egg you’d
run out of cash, without an outside input of funds you would soon run out of food and other
necessary items to continue your life. Now, shift that thinking over to the government, where
will the government create a new tax base that is capable of supporting the demands that the
operation of the country come from, if the cycle employed is simply a tax influx from an
employee base that is being paid by the government – the pot will run dry if new taxes are not
collected from an enterprise outside of the government…think about it!
Today looking about I see that a great many people believe that “making the world a better
place, means a concentrated effort into making it a perfect place” and when they see their dreams
for a “perfect” place being chipped away at the edges get discouraged and walk about telling
others, who understand that just because it isn’t “perfect” doesn’t mean that it hasn’t become a
“good place”, that they are upside down in their thinking. A good many of our leaders, at every
level, fail to understand that their example of appearing to put a great deal of their advice in their
own pockets along with a few bucks here and there are not leading, but taking advantage of their
position and putting their electorate in 2nd or 3rd place.
In leading people the leader first has to understand the types of people they might be leading,
basically there are three types that they cannot lead effectively, the stupid, the religious fanatic
and last but not least the evil.
Those that are not smart enough to follow any resemblance of logic will never accept what is
right, even in simple terms, and if they don’t agree it is safe to assume that even a good leader
will never be able to change their minds. These I classify as the stupid.
The ones that hang onto their religion like a cat on a dead fish will oppose anyone who appears
to be going against their religious belief, and will cling to this position even it means their death
and the death to anyone around their position, family or friends.
 As for evil, there is no way (other than a brain transplant) that anyone can convince serial
killers, pedophiles, and predators to change their practices. They above all know what they are
doing wrong, but even this personal knowledge cannot or did not stop them – only making them
more practiced in committing their acts in hopes that they are harder to spot and punish. In other
words they really don’t give a rat’s behind about what society thinks of them, whereas the only
person important to them is them! They will lie, cheat, steal, and seek any opportunity at the
expense of others – these members of society have to be removed by force, a simple fact that
many liberals truly believe is inhumane. Somewhere along the line these protestors of such
things as the death penalty, life imprisonment with no chance for parole, have laid by the side of
the road the victims of the criminally insane and moan about the treatment of the perpetrators of
the crime. Through their tears they scream out “there is good in everyone!” What has become
apparent is that “turning the other cheek” does not mean constantly flipping your head from side
to side and letting the person smack your cheek(s) repeatedly – there is a limit! In other words,
not everyone has some good in them!
There are some facts that struck me a little strange, yet they seem to bear out. When the
experts, PR guys mostly, examined the actual voting results they came to a preliminary
conclusion that less dense populations tend to be more conservative than highly dense
populations – and some have made a conclusion that they could tell the place where the actual
change took place – by the distance between the two regions. They used for their example New
York State and took each voting district that had an associated average population value per
square mile in addition they recorded the distance to a key population center. The two numbers
influence local attitudes towards government and social programs, when the density is high and
the distance from a major population center is low, then people tend to favor big social programs,
but have a high distrust for the government.
Think about it, if you live in a high-density-area, you must rely on government services and
social programs, whereas you can’t go out in your backyard and burn your trash when there are
1000s of people around you doing the same thing. It just doesn’t work! So you rely on trash
collectors, fire departments, and law enforcement to maintain order. It is natural that you don’t
want them to be too intrusive in your life, so you don’t trust them. In a low population situation,
the trash collector is not going to drive 15-miles out to you to haul your trash away, and you’re
much more careful with fire, and over-all you have to take care of yourself including your own
protection – in other words you underestimate your need for intrusive government services. What
government there is, is basically small and of the local origin and transparent. You know the
people in office and trust them because they don’t normally interfere with your day-to-day life.
 These two extremes have a very different perspective on what is necessary from their
government, so they vote based on those perspectives. Intermediate population densities have
perspectives that tend to grow more in favor of positions taken within the highly dense regions
that are close to urban regions - again they too have a slight difference in the government services
they expect!
What I found interesting is that the winners at the State level were supported by the majority of
their constituents, while the winners at Federal levels were supported by only 10% of their
constituents – in other words for some strange reason the voters elected representatives for
National office who really did not represent their interests. What?
There are a dozen major issues that are important at any given time, and each candidate has a
position on each of those issues. A candidate could have a position on “one” of those issues that
is supported by a majority of the people in his or her district, so if they campaigned on that issue
they are likely to be elected, and the inverse of this would be that if the rest of the issues is NOT
supported by the majority of people in his district, we’d believe they loose!
Consider this to be true, if the other issues they don’t support are NEVER raised, you getting
the picture here – the politician campaigns on one issue and let’s assume it is a very polarizing
issue, albeit the voters haven’t got a clue on the candidates position on the other issues, because
he or she doesn’t debate them they are elected by the majority. Granted there are a hardcore 10%
who agree with him them and an equally hardcore 10% who disagree with him, this slim 20%
know where he stands on the rest of the issues.
What is happening is that we have a candidate that runs on the “one” issue that his staff
believes will get him elected and “ignores” all of the other issues – consequently the voters
choose between the two candidates never realizing that “neither” candidate represents their
positions on the “majority” of the issues. When you think about the majority of “polls”
conducted concentrate on “one” issue, where the popular opinion is based on a limited amount of
information.
I for one believe in the single term process – eliminating the current practice that promotes the
acceptance of cold hard cash or future favors that sway the decisions of our elected
representatives, and secondly leaving us essentially ungoverned as the candidates run about for a
year gathering donations and creating massive re-election campaigns that are full of half-truths
and ball-faced falsehoods colored as being good for the country, when in fact they are not. I also
believe we have drifted away from the basics in selecting our representatives, this due to a
number of reasons, some easy to define others less so. We select our representatives based on
their exposure by the media, which is bought and paid for, until cash is dumped on the table we
hear little of their previous accomplishments, after the greenbacks are carried into the halls of the
cameras’ and PR organizations then we see what they only want you to see.
We used to rely on our local newspaper to fill in the blank spots, today influenced by
advertising dollars and country wide franchises they have become an extension of the PR gang
supporting the candidate. In some regions where there are no longer two dynamically opposed
news outlets you hear or see a single view point, and if you’re intelligent enough to understand
this you either cheer or cry. In addition to the consolidation of news outlets there are a growing
number of irresponsible distributors of our daily news, whereas in the days of Walter Cronkite a
news story was thoroughly research and double-checked to determine if the story was true, and
the “facts” within the release could be substantiated. Today a great number of the press, have
adopted the practice to print it and “maybe” retract a bit here and there if the information is
proven to be false. Unfortunately the damage is done and society in general has accepted the
information as factual, and as you well know buried somewhere on page 37 of a 75-page
newspaper in the smallest print permitted might be a retraction, usually a limited statement
written by a slick legal eagle that would cover their butt if they are hauled into a court to defend
their outright slander. Reporter who used to have a little integrity now demand information from
public officials screaming at the top of their voices that the public has a right to know, they
disregard the fact that the right to privacy applies to public figures just as it does to these scum
bags of the free press. If an interview is not forth coming, they stir the dirt around and print a few
rumors and BS, sit back in their crammed offices, smirk and go about their business feeling they
have done their service to the American Way. 99.9% of them are idiots, and in most opinions
have replaced lawyers as the scum of the earth. Even in this day and age of spell-check I have
read some articles that are almost impossible to understand for the amount of errors – it is
embarrassing.
Our world has changed, whereas it used to be if you worked hard for a company that you would
have a job for life – not so today. Where it was also once true that a doctor was well respected,
we now find high-school graduate dictating medical treatment to the doctor according to
insurance guidelines.
Technology has changed our children, the backbone of the country, when I was of that age
where playing was important a group of us would come up with some game and spend hours
improving it. When we reach a point where a great many of us had mastered the rules and the
object of the game we invented another one and we were off and running into the land of make
believe filled with challenges, wonder and learning. Today many of our children and their
children don’t understand the value of playing, other than sitting in front of a large screen,
twisting knobs, pushing buttons and moving joy sticks back and forth with their tongue tightly
gripped between their gums in an attempt to defeat a monster, madman, or some other evil
created by a group of centralized game masters somewhere on the planet.
I’m not saying our children have forgot how to play, only that the act of playing is now limited
to a single individual competing against a machine and not his fellow man, thereby they see no
result of their actions or taunting of their playmates, they don’t have to take the time to take one
of their members under their wing when they get hurt, nor do they have to face the wrath and the
tear streaked faces of their parents when they gently walk them home to explain what happened.
This by itself is a valuable lesson in the future of the child, short term values and long-term
lessons in the act of playing are critical to our society’s survival, I would bet that there have been
times when you sat in front of your entertainment system and watch a program on animals
produced by National Geographic – watching young animals playing, their parents understanding
the value of the action with respect to a successful integration into the world when they are finally
pushed away from the protection of their mother. We are failing miserably when it comes to
playing!
In closing, looking about one would believe that our society has become addicted to violence,
where centuries of violence throughout the world has left us with a log of addicts – consider,
nothing is or violent than war! Learned scholars compare these addicts to danger junkies, where
getting shot at creates as much as a rush as skiing down a slope in front of an avalanche, where it
is supposed that no one really feels alive until an incredible amount of adrenaline and endorphins
are flooding through their body.
Me, I extremely alive when I sit quietly with a good book, writing and/or reflecting on what is
coming and what has gone by, and watching my partner and companion preparing our evening
meal – but then again I’m only one out of 6,868,764,501 of our societies load on our planet.
Have a good day!