by Cactus Jack » Fri Aug 26, 2005 4:12 pm
I wish that wasn't so damn funny.
How could 54,000,000 people be wrong? That's a damn good question, one in which I am nearly at a loss.
Most of those who voted for Bush wouldn't be allowed in the doors they support. Some call it "drinking the Kool Aid." If you believed there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and they were aimed at us, then you sure better support the President. 58% of the people think that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were in league on 9/11. Yeah, that's right. 58% If you didn't support attacking Iraq, then you were anti-American, unpatriotic, and just stupid. You were one of those Liberals that want to give away the country.
Twenty years ago, William P. Simon, former Secretary of the Treasury under Gerald Ford, a Republican, published a book entitled A Time for Truth. He stated that if you gave just the INCREASE in funding for the War on Poverty to every poor man, woman and child, the total would be $32,000/year. That was 25 years ago. You get the drift? We have more poor than ever. Obviously, we lost that war.
And the War on Drugs and the War on Terror isn't going so well, either. Why can't we declare war on something we can win?
K3nt, I'm walking an extremely narrow line here and don't want anyone to think I'm a racist. When I said that the U.S. was a homogenous society, I meant it was a white European society. Our country now has almost as large a "minority" population as it does caucasian. It won't be too long before there will be as many Hispanic as white. The African-American segment has held steady at around 12%. However, between Asian and Hispanics, the trend has gone way up.
What this has led to is a much more heterogenous society, each with an agenda that is often at odds with the country's agenda, on the whole. Those two segments are much more focused on their families and their community. They don't feel they are a part of the U.S. They aren't enfranchised. It's like a boat being crewed by people pulling their oars in different directions. While each direction may be good for the individual, the ship founders. Immigrants from Europe in the 1800s all wanted to share in the "American Dream." It was a tremendous period of growth, but still a small population in a very large place. Now, it's crowded with dwindling resources and serious problems which occur in a mature society.
A society evolves in a haphazard but natural process. Much of it is the system which fosters growth, but most of it is chance. We cannot return to the US of the 50s, which many would like to do, as this is seen as the very pinnacle of US power. We could no more do that than we can stop the liberalizing of rules about what is acceptable on TV. How many of George Carlin's 7 Words are now being used regularly? M*A*S*H was the first R-rated movie I ever saw. Now, it wouldn't even be PG-13. The genie cannot be put back in the bottle, or Pandora's Box is wide open, if you prefer.
We're not going back. And mostly our leadership talks about going back, because that's what people want. I know where we've been, and where we are, and have a fair idea where we're heading. I don't like it, but no one has a choice about it. I'm just glad I'm on the downside, instead of having to deal with a future that's so uncertain.
Reality is what happens behind us while we're busy watching another parade.
CJ
"Are the players better as the stakes go up? It's not an exam; it's a buyin." Barry Tanenbaum