Our greatest generation is going fast to meet their maker and seek
their promised salvation. They have felt some trepidation about it too, being
taught to love life above the expediency of politicians. They sacrificed a lot
for the greater good of their fellows to be the preservers of freedom in the
world. Liberty rested in their hands! They knew it and rose up to seek the
continuity of the freedoms they had enjoyed their whole lives up to then. The
generation before theirs had risen to that task as well. Unfortunately the
peace that had been won was not to last. The punishment meted out against the
aggressors of that time was too steep a price to pay, resentments ran high.
Then came along a charismatic speaker to the fore, feeding the
resentments; a divider and propagandist non-pareil who whipping up a generation
of punished people, ordinary people, to feel righteousness in their resentments
of the generation before. He then found another group on which to place blame.
Putting blame toward a particular ethnic group, the Jewish people and culture,
scapegoating them for their dire circumstances and poorness due in truth to the
onerous burdens of restitution for WWI.
Most Jewish people were just working people like all others,
values similar, but also a degree of different. It seemed to be enough to be
made into a targeted foe of the Nazi Party, not a real foe but a convenient
one. The tragedy of the holocaust and WWII ensued. When America got involved it
was tough going, but eventually there was enough military strength to overcome
the axis powers soundly and the peace was won. Then we had to keep the peace.
There have been other wars and policing actions at times around
the world. But no other generation of heroes was ever feted and made over as
much as that one generation has been in the life of our nation. Now we are at a
crossroads once again and have to decide:
Who are we now?
Are we the defenders of our
fellows, or are we the expedient foe?
Are our leaders leading us
in the direction of another war?
Is the GOD of today a
lesser leader than the GOD of those generations before us had?
When we see vile acts being
visited upon our fellow men and women do we hurt less?
I think not.
With our communications being practically in real time now it
becomes even more urgent to us to right the wrongs we see. Yet we are drawn
into wanting to act decisively, accurately, and accountably, and we are not
seeing that quality of leadership being exhibited nowadays. With more questions
than answers we see our leadership needs going unmet. Our confidence is shaken.
Our resources are being misused and squandered before our eyes and
not being utilized in a judicious manner. Our challenge may be to remonstrate
that the benefits our generation has garnered from our parents' and grandparents'
willingness to pitch in to further the advantages furnished through those
sacrifices that we are worthy of them.
During the recent governmental shutdown the darkness cast from
Washington D C out across this nation showed the American people, the
bureaucratic position was to make suffering of our veterans the showpiece of
their ineptitude in resolving the most inane of issues, much less the truly big
issues plaguing our nation today!
I visited our local zoo one warm afternoon, to see some new
exhibits that have been installed. They were very nice; our extra tax dollars
are being well spent there. We went to see the sea lions and orangutans, the
giraffes and the condors. We went into the rain forest exhibit and I stopped for
a moment's rest in the relative coolness of the muted shadows inside the doors.
Another woman was doing the same. Her husband and children moved on ahead of us
and my companions did too. We chatted as we watched them all go ahead on the
pathway into the moist air. She said she needed to rest her knees as she had
stress fractures in both of them and still was in need of more surgeries and
therapies to fully heal. I must have looked surprised at that. She is a
beautiful young woman. How could that be? She had been injured during training
of some kind in Afghanistan, she said. She was afraid the VA funding for her
continuing treatments would be cut and that that would devalue her quality of
life forever. I said I hoped that wouldn't happen to her, thinking to myself
that it had better not! I could see the 3 active kids, ahead of us all, with
wonder in their eyes and curiosity in their antics, excited to see and do new
things. Those kids need their mother to be able to do all the things that moms
do! We moved on then, our respite over. But, our encounter there stuck to my
heart and to my mind. Mulling over what she'd said and sad that she should have
to be fearful of not getting the treatments she needs, breaks my heart.
I know several other young veterans that are also in such a place,
not knowing with any confidence that the promises of the contract they made
with the USA would be fulfilled, after they had fulfilled their duty to their
own side of the agreement. I can't help but be more and more irked by the utter
callousness and failure of those in the seats of power to be continuingly deaf
to the needs of so many that have gone, at their direction, to meet any and all
demands put upon them; those who are regularly going above and beyond mere
requirement to perform admirably the tasks given them.
These contracts must be
met!
The high roller on Capitol Hill must be smitten with their own
hubris in thinking they would not have to fulfill their part of those
contracts.
What with the caution-to-the-wind spending they do, they have
forgotten their own jobs. To do what they have been hired to do, by, We the People.
Defending our borders, enforcing our laws, and to make a budget to do those
things and to live within that budget. It is not their job to do much else. It
is not their job to regulate everything that we do, not what we eat, nor what
we think say or express. The Capitol Hill crowd, with all the cronies and
hangers on there, seem to be thinking that their behaving as martinets is
acceptable.
Wrong!
Small minds, wielding power over others, doesn't change the fact
of their small mindedness. It is but one small line item in the over bloated
spending that Capitol Hill does every year. I do think that we could cut a few
pork barrel items to take care of our veterans. OR, do the martinets think that
would be Un-American?
It is now up to us, to step up to the task and be the great
generation of the new century, to emulate our forefathers. To demand and posit
for our people what is the most important to us, self-determination! In liberty
and in justice for all our people; not to be trampled upon for the divisive
greed on capitol hill nor set aside for this group or that. 
Power lust is the road of
ruin as is evinced through all recorded history.
MA.W 2013
No comments:
Post a Comment