Billy, we did start the fire

And yes specifically the ones burning down our country right now. 

Decades of greed, indifference, pretentiousness, ignorance, selfishness, hypocrisy all add up over time. 

I say I want to be positive, but quite frankly since the 1950′s we just haven’t cut muster. And the current fire didn’t get started over night. We have been adding fuel during this whole time.

Racism is a byproduct of ignorance. And ignorance is a by product of indifference. And indifference is a by product of selfishness, so you can begin to comprehend how we evolved into this mess. Throw in a dash of wealth inequality, income inequality, deteriorating morals, apathy, disenfranchisement,  elitism, and the recipe for disaster grows. 

We didn’t have to be burning down this country. We had every opportunity to actually be the country we always say we are. In the 1960′s we put a man on the moon. In the 1950′s we simultaneously began integration and a whole new batch of racism. We liked Ike. We liked rock n roll. We hated communism. We loved cars. And people loved making money from oil.

We chose to let the military industrial complex take over, even though we were warned, well barely. 

And the older generation of the 1950′s just wanted to rest and who is to blame them. They had been through two world wars and a depression. Most people’s life expectancy was still in the 60′s. The generation that came to retirement in the 1950′s were ready to retire and then they passed away. The next generation was the first generation to have it all, but they didn’t. 

The middle class or the white middle class of the 50′s then 60′s reached a zenith no other culture had in the history of the world. The middle class was truly something to be reckoned with and somehow or another things went south. It took 60 years, but now we see the cracks opening up and laying bare where we let ourselves lose what we once had. 

The working class now is service industry minimum wage plus earners with no future, no education, no healthcare, no way to build wealth, living less than paycheck to paycheck, and being used and abused by people who have absolutely no respect for the human race or condition, sometimes referred to as the one percenters. Yet, it isn’t just the uber rich that destroyed the working and middle class in America. 

The two political parties have danced around a myriad of promises that never materialize acting like they are the only ones that can solve their problems all the while adding to them year after year. 

Take for example the food stamp program. In some ways this should be a Christian led public policy initiative. Instead it is a handout by Democrats acting like they are fighting a war on poverty. This is one big sham. The Democrats do not have a clue on how to fight a war on poverty no matter what they say. If they had a clue inner cities wouldn’t be war zones, people wouldn’t be obese and starving at the same time. Diabetes and other health problems wouldn’t dominate medicaid spending. There is no program to help the poor, there is only crumbs thrown at them to buy their votes. And the concept of opportunity for them is so far removed it isn’t even a concept. 

And then there is the lie of the American Dream the previous version of the Republican party use to sell. The American Dream was burnt down in the 1970′s as corporations began running our government. Over time the dream has been held up as a carrot, yet while the middle class chased it they didn’t realize the infrastructure of stability was eroding around the edges till now you can fall off a precipice if one event goes wrong such as cancer or extended job loss. Yet people kept chasing the dream until Fox News came along and sold the fear of losing it. It was already lost, but now we get prepackaged hate sold alongside pillows all the while the elites are taking every last vestige of the American soul and sending us all to hell. 

So with a blind eye we, the people, wonder what happened. Every problem we have is manufactured by someone else taking advantage of large swaths of the country’s inability to think critically. I looked it up and in many studies we have one of the greatest education systems in the world, yet we are 38th in math scores and 24th in science as of 2018. The same article I got this information from didn’t even touch reading comprehension. So how can we make practical decisions if we cannot get practical learning? How does a country with the greatest or second greatest education system fall so far down the rankings? 

Or how about wealth? One article I read said by 2021 the one percent would own 70% of the wealth. And in case you haven’t noticed that is 6 months away. What gives? And that follows that just a few short years ago, the one percent and the middle class had about the same amount of wealth. How can this devolve in less than five years? And first of all it shouldn’t have been that close. 

And healthcare? That is so mixed up you cannot find any consistency in articles about where that stands for most Americans. It is expensive, no one understands what is happening, and worst of all, now some healthcare workers are being denied benefits even though they are getting Covid 19 while on the job. Yea, corporate profits sure look good, but forget about the workers that got it for them. In the late 1800s workers were being shot for fighting for basic rights in a job. Now workers cannot even do their job without being exposed to insults, crazed people that somehow think their rights are taken away when asked to show common courtesy, being shot by their customers for trying to help them, how far exactly have we come.

Yet for all this madness above we will wake up tomorrow and we are still the United States of America. The vast majority of people are hard working, caring, fun loving, want some sense of a moral compass and would love leadership that has a clue about what to do for tomorrow. And this has nothing to do with race, creed, color or political affiliation. This is something all Americans want. So why is the country burning and why cannot we find Americans to step up.

Occasionally we have someone like William McRaven who says that our greatest national security threat is our education system. He is right, but what follow up is there. He is retired. And even though the Federal government is not the primary source for education, federal spending on education is going down about 3% a year. Add that to local budgets are strapped even before 2020 so where does the difference come from? And how can you improve with the financial decline?

 And most news articles report what he says and then move on. And the press is going to move on, it is part of what they do. It is up to us to read this and do something, yet instead of more follow up about what he said we crave to hear more and more about some couple in Missouri who posed for the cameras with their guns on their front lawn. Why, because we consume the crazy. The rational is boring even for all those fun loving, caring, hard working people who need it. What benefits us the most, we ignore. And yet again, we are the United States and can still turn this around and continue to be something special on the world stage. Right now we have a bit of work cut out for us so we need to act, but if we do, then life will get better. Hopefully after this fire, when we clean out the ashes and embers, when the scorched earth is laid bare, we replant with more care and grow a stronger and more vibrant country that is more inclusive, more generous, more understanding that we all share this country and this world. 

So many people do so many wonderful things on a day in day out basis, but why that doesn’t filter up I do not know. 

There is no one “ism” that is the problem, the problem is when we let the “isms” define us. We need to define what we do. We need to tear down our inhibitions and reach out and then work to find the best solution to whatever the problem of the day happens to be. Once the people redefine the priorities the whole of the country benefits. The rich, the poor, the middle, the sick, the healthy, the old, the young, all the colors, etc are all people. And all the people should benefit. This isn’t rocket science, it is straight forward respect for each other. And that respect is what can take us galactic distances.