Thursday, May 13, 2010

Ship of Fools

There are times that I simply can not believe what I hear or see in the media or among my circle of associates. The sheer, stupendous ignorance of the American people is truly frightening. I sometimes feel like the only sane person on a Ship of Fools.

There is nothing going on today that has not happened a hundred times throughout human society. The names of the people and nations have been different, but they all follow similar paths. Mao, Hitler, Stalin, Napoleon, and Caesar to name only a few, all had humble beginnings, a shadowy and an inconspicuous rise on the fringes, and then a sudden rush to power when society became weak and stressed by outside influences. The rush to power is made with a promise of normalcy even while they completely remake society, or "fundamentally transform" the status quo.

If the people could step away from the euphoria of the moment and engage any form of critical thinking they would realize that they might be better off with the difficulties of today then the uncertainty of tomorrow. The American system is not broken, but it has been bent. It needs a reboot; badly. Fundamentally, returning to the American system of the 1870's will repair most of what ails us. In fact, any time before the Progressive movement would fix us. We need a reboot. The government is too big and too intrusive. I'll list a few gems that have set my mind spinning of late:
Michelle Obama noted the other day that the recently passed Health Care Reform contains provisions giving the Federal Government the power to regulate the marketing of food items to children, and by extension, all of us. Really, I didn't see that and neither did anyone else I know. It's probably mucked up in there somewhere, it was a huge bill, after all. Sponge Bob (don't judge me) has gone all environmental on us and may be forced to begin preaching a healthy lifestyle to the nations' children. Bad time to be a fry cook.
The Agro business has been ordered to reduce the salt content in their food because the American people can't put down the salt shaker. Are they going to take away my salt shaker? If the food tastes like Yak because there is no salt in it from the producer, I WILL put salt on it. Dopes. How about sugar? Yep, that will be controlled as well.
Congress is telling Banks and Wall Street how they can trade. Regulators are going to be doubled on oil rigs because they spent too much time collecting royalties and too much time letting the industry write its own over site controls.
Obama goes off script and says things like, "I believe that you can make too much money," and more "Bush-isms" then even Bush made. Rush is right in that Obama is ALWAYS the most unqualified man in any room he walks into. This is the guy who thinks he is running America? I'll save Soros and the shadowy people in the background for another day.

Since when can a school tell a student to take off a shirt because it has an American flag on it? I don't care what day of the year it is. Did the school take down the flag in the school yard on May 5th? Since when is it ok for the government to spend four times more money in a month then they take in...on the single highest revenue month (thats April, people, tax month)?

A Ship of Fools. We have a President who really has done nothing except have a useful background that made him electable, er, pliable to the right people. A Vice President who is the Lord and Master of Fools (lay off the Botox there, Joe, it is poison if you use too much). Pelosi is a Left coast Marxist while Reid is simply a politician who loves the perks. We have a Main Stream Media (MSM) that has been sympathetic to the left for the last 50 years (I still have no idea why) and provides the Marxists around the world with credibility though they seem to be too stupid to realize that they will be the first ones up against the wall when the Marxists do take power. We have a Hollywood and Media elite that are so bored with their fame and wealth (and very, very guilty too) that they take up one stupid cause after another. They never seem to come up with the idea of giving all their money away and living a simple life. You know, give all that money to the poor so that they won't be, like, poor any more. Never comes to them. They will be the second class of people up against the wall. We have a public that thinks that life will go on being good and unchanging. The problems of the world are always elsewhere, never realizing that those problems have been here and will come again. They put on their iPods and play with their iPads, paying for things with credit cards and home equity loans, never really thinking about how long or hard it will be to pay all that back.

The world is going mad. It is 1930 again. The players on histories stage are coming on to play their parts. Our Hitlers and Stalins and Maos are among us, spinning their tales. Europe is again burning, America is again slumping into depression, and the American people continue whistling down the road in their cars like nothing is going on in the world, too wrapped up in their insular lives.

I asked my Grandmother years ago what it was like to live through the Great Depression and World War II. She shrugged and said that it was hard but that you just live your life. A very understated and under appreciated woman, she is. That part of our history has been romanticized through the movies and modern history books. The reality was a grind. The country saw unemployment of between 12 and 25% from 1930 to 1946. My Grandmother was 10 years old when the stock market crashed. She was a teenager during the Depression. She was 20 when WWII got serious in Europe. She was there for the darkest moments in our modern history and when I asked her what it was like, she just shrugged and told me that she got on with living. She made do and found happiness in her husband, her family, her friends, and her church. The rest just took care of itself. She didn't actually say all of that, but that shrug and her one sentence unpacked a lot of information.

So, I'll get on with my life, take care of my wife and children, and work hard on carving out some comfort and sanity in the world that is coming. Thank you, Grandma. What I'm truly sorry for is that you have lived so long that you have to see it come to us, once again.

-Zavost


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