Tag: society

It’s So Easy To Slip

Great song by Bob Weir, vocalist and guitarist for the Grateful Dead. “It’s so easy to slip, it’s so easy to fall. And let your memory drift and do nothing at all”. So appropriate. It’s so easy to let the world skip on by especially if you are a politician and more worried about your career than the people you are in an elected position to watch out for.

So easy too for a democracy to become that in name only. Russia calls itself a democracy. But notice how anyone who opposes the current ruler ends up dead. Usually they get put in jail and then die while there. Sometimes they are poisoned while in other countries, with substances that are only available to defense departments of large countries. Russian laws are there for the aristocracy, not for the people. The people have no rights against the government. Anyone challenging the ruling class is arrested or killed. The exact opposite of what the founding fathers intended when they wrote the American Constitution. A government by the people for the people, not for a select few who work themselves into positions of great wealth and power.

Because many have been left behind in the economy of today they are rightly upset about the way the government is functioning. Currently many people think that having three equal branches of government is too cumbersome and would prefer to have a CEO, or two, to take charge and get things done. It might help in the short term. but down the road when there are no restraints and things aren’t going the right direction it will be a different story. There are very few in history who have given up power once they were offered it. George Washington was one. He could’ve kept the presidency for as long as he lived but he chose not to. He realized that it wasn’t him but the people who needed to be in charge. Leaders of democracies are responsible to the people, who have the ultimate say over them. But if the leader sets out to tear down the curbs and restrictions on his power, and no one stops him on the principle of it, then it won’t be possible to go back. Hitler was elected too and he dissolved the governing body so that he could do what he wanted to without anyone standing in his way.

Our current leaders admire dictators. They think they themselves are good at dictating. They really don’t believe in the three branch system of government. I doubt they have ever read the constitution, or had any understanding of it if they did. It’s not in their nature. One person, or two, with a handful of cronies ruling the empire. That’s how they operate. Because it’s so much easier, of course, than having to convince others who disagree with you, that you are right. We’ve lost, not only the ability to compromise, but the ambition to compromise. All or nothing is the new modus operandi. And every day they are testing the limits of their power, always pushing for more and more, at the expense of the other two governing bodies. Whittle away at the legislature here and a little at the judiciary there and soon neither will have the powers granted by the constitution. All the reins will be in one set of hands.

Is this what America has come to? Are we really willing to give up the greatest democracy in the world because it’s easier than working out a solution we can all agree on?

All it will take from here is to do nothing. But it’s going to take an overwhelming majority to do something, and soon, before there’s nothing anyone can do.

Posted on by thinkb4its2late_6cwoeb

Solid Gold

My local radio station has a program called Solid Gold in the mornings, with a real DJ, by that I mean someone who knows something about music, not just presenting blurbs for advertisers. This DJ doesn’t read from a script. He talks about the musicians and the music he’s playing and is old enough to have been around when most of the music first played on the radio. Solid Gold.

Which is quite a bit different from gold plate. Gold plate has a bright shine and draws attention to itself. Real gold is rather shy, stays hidden in the ground, waiting patiently for someone to search it out. It can trust in the fact that it is pure gold, it’s worth is acknowledged world wide. Gold plate parades around showing itself off, trying to pose as real. Just under the surface there’s no telling what. You can gold plate anything.

Not much real gold in the world these days. Lots of razzle-dazzle. If you could ever see them both side by side the difference would be obvious. But with solid gold still around, probably, but staying hidden for the most part (after all, it’s value isn’t affected by imitations), it might be hard to tell solid gold from gold plate. It’s worth asking though and better to know. You wouldn’t want to go around believing something had the value of solid gold when it was in reality just a shiny gold surface.

Posted on by thinkb4its2late_6cwoeb

It’s a Mean Old World

The first time I heard that was from an unlikely source. Decades ago I had a client who was an elderly Jewish widow. She had all kinds of money, owned a condominium in the same building as Elton John in Buckhead, Atlanta. She and her husband had worked hard and been successful so I couldn’t understand why she had that outlook on life. Then one day I was at her home and her son stopped by. He was in his fifties I would guess and was permanently crippled from polio, which he had contracted as a child. I began to see how she might think the world was mean if she had seen him suffer, both physically, and in other ways from going through life with a disability. He, like my parents, was born before the polio vaccine was invented. None of my immediate relatives ever contracted it, but neither my mom nor my dad ever learned to swim because of the danger when they were growing up. I never found out any more about my client’s son’s story. All the money in the world could not cure what polio had done to him during childhood.

A lot of years have passed since I heard my elderly friend make that comment and for the most part I had forgotten it, being an optimist I guess because so many kind things have happened to me I tend to take the good in people for granted. But here lately it does seem like the world has gotten meaner. We’re all shouting at each other, cursing and threatening to kill each other over the slightest thing. I know social media has caused most of it, the more we give into our emotions online, the better our chances of going viral, which seems to be everyone’s goal these days. We can now vent our frustrations to the world. As I recall, pre-internet that was something I would only do with my closest friends and family and in private. Now it’s become the norm to show our worst selves to the world at large. And where a friend or family member would listen and try to calm our negative emotions, now once it goes viral there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. The media companies themselves, but we all know that isn’t going to happen, not in a million years.

So there we are. Yes, there’s lots of good things going on but what gets the most attention in all of our media is the ugly, the frightening, the worst. Maybe that little old lady was right, it is a mean old world after all. Too bad because most people are really basically good. I still believe that, in spite of how it looks online.

Posted on by thinkb4its2late_6cwoeb

Parking lot woes

Last week after work I stopped by the Neighborhood Market for a few groceries. It happened to be in an upper class neighborhood, with homes selling for much higher than the median home price in our city. I was checking emails on my work phone when I heard sirens going by, I thought, which is not unusual, a major medical center was just up over the hill. But when I looked up I saw that police had pulled up behind me and in front of me, lights flashing on their black SUVs, three of them, while another quickly followed. Two spaces away and facing me, was an older man in what looked to be a 1980s Toyota pickup. The officers approached the truck. I could not hear what was being said but the suspect apparently said something they didn’t like. When he got out of his truck one of the officers, a big burly guy, immediately threw him to the ground. There were no weapons of any kind. Now it is certainly the police officer’s right to apprehend someone they believe has broken the law. But the response was so overboard it seemed ridiculous. I could’ve taken that old man out and I’m 5’6″. He was no threat to anyone. But four officers, all stronger and much younger thought it necessary to tackle him on the asphalt. Again, I did not hear what was said between them but the tackling officer was so angry it seemed way out of proportion to the situation. I don’t know what he had done, I suspect he took something from the store. Walmart has a very aggressive policy towards shoplifting. And I don’t condone stealing but I am certain that the whole thing could’ve been accomplished without violence. They put handcuffs or zip ties, I could not see which, on him and took him away.

So much anger, everywhere. Was it because the man, who was obviously experiencing hard times, he was rough looking, driving an old worn out car, with worn out clothes and generally unkempt, had ventured into an upper class neighborhood? It was Walmart, after all, not Saks Fifth Avenue. Was it because the officer knew he could get away with it? It could’ve been something totally unrelated to the parking lot I was in, but still, the man did not resist and was no physical threat to anyone, especially the policemen.

It makes me sad to realize that this is the new normal. I tried to back up and leave when I saw this happening, but the officer’s vehicle blocked me in. A few other customers came out to their cars, most tried to ignore what they saw, didn’t want to get involved. I have seen, over the years many people being apprehended by police either inside a store or outside in the parking lot. This was the first time I have seen someone thrown to the ground, who was not even trying to resist. So much anger, it can’t be a good thing for our society.

One thing I did do, was drive away without entering the store. After the police moved their SUVs I decided that I would take my business elsewhere. Which is a shame because I shop at that location frequently. I’ll find another store that’s more peaceful. It may not change anything. But the least I can do is not ignore it.

Posted on by thinkb4its2late_6cwoeb 0

Pro Life Sentence

All those protesting abortion who claim to be pro life are really pro life sentence. They haven’t shown one ounce of compassion for anything other than the unborn. Once that baby is born it can be neglected, deprived of love, of nourishment, of education, of opportunity. And if it happens to be a black or Hispanic male when it gets to be an adolescent you can shoot and kill it without any of the pro-lifers uttering a peep. You never hear those who shout and scream pro life from the rooftops that they care anything about that same child after it’s born. None of them advocate for health care for infants, child care, early education. Their caring stops the moment that baby passes through the birth canal and enters the world. An unwanted child is in most cases going to have a very hard time making it in our society. He or she does not grow up with all of the necessary ingredients for a healthy, happy childhood which leads to them becoming, in time, a contributing adult in our society. Most often they are contributing to those who make money from the prison system, from cheap labor provided by the undereducated and underprivileged. So let’s be clear about what it is they are really for, which is a life sentence of struggle for themselves and their mothers.

Abortion is a terrible thing, there’s no question. But is it worse than what an unwanted child suffers in this world? I suspect in many cases it is not.

Posted on by thinkb4its2late_6cwoeb 0