The Emerald Rose

          Time for my annual Christmas thoughts. This year I think of all who have not, or have lost all in the past year or so. It is truly depressing when you think about it. Fathers unemployed, wives trying to cope and keep things as “normal” as possible. Watching equity plummet in your “Great American Dream” , or own home if you will. A government wandering amok, people who can’t get along with each other because they have forgotten that we are all in this together, we all have to pull an oar to move the great ship,….or we all perish.

      Dire? I think yes. We have truly crushed the middle class of this country. We have destroyed what made this country. We have allowed greed, ego, and hatred to rule and have hoisted high the banner of socialism, ripping away the very glue which made us who we were twenty years ago.

       Can you believe in anything anymore? When a college degree today is basically equal to a high school education of fifty years ago. Where metal detectors are commonplace in our schools, and policemen walk the halls of those same schools to keep a semblance of order.

       Where the only thing growing is the State, on the backs of it’s people. Where an “enemy” like China now owns more of this country’s money than we do, where banking has turned into the ultimate Ponzi scheme, AND is immune to the government! The Government loans them billions, at ZERO interest to “bail them out”, what do they do with that money meant to stimulate the economy and get us moving again? They invest it overseas at 3 to 5% interest and squirrel away the profits like the fuzzy little rodents late in the fall before the hard cold winter sets in.

       We are an obese nation, why? Because we chose to be obese, we have gone past obese and are leaning into “morbidly obese”. The food companies tout how good the fat, the calories, the carbohydrates taste, just like the forbidden apple of early creation history, and what do we do, not just have one, but several and ignore the consequences because we are being fed the line that the field of medicine can right just about any wrong with a pill, or in a drastic case a nip and a tuck, or a liposuction, and we are good as new!

        We now pay serious money to doctors to essentially install a “radiator hose clamp”, a/k/a “lap-band” so food will not enter our system in the vast quantities we eat! How stupid is that? “But I have no will power,….I’m addicted to food,…..it’s a sickness.” To which I reply “BULLS**T!!”

         But alas such is the world we live in, the government is trying to “mandate” health insurance upon us, even though it is in my opinion unconstitutional, they are like drunken sailors spending over $40,000 per person per year, every year and that includes the child just born fifteen minutes ago. In debt from birth, the next logical progression of excess debt is indentured servitude, which our monolithic government has already encumbered us with, against our will no less.

        So why is there no revolt, why is there no uprising? Me thinks it is sooner coming than we know, because you can never enslave a people who have tasted freedom. They are a complacent lot up to a point, and then beware. Much like poking a snake with a stick there will be a day of reckoning.

        I know many people, I don’t know any quite ready to support violence,…..YET. But I do know that when very wealthy people begin to seriously look at the “Ex-pat” option it is getting serious. That leaves only the “great huddled masses” with no hope, no future, and looking into a mirror and seeing themselves having “failed”, again and again, and again. Then the line is irrevocably drawn in the sand, then the ends begin to really be the goal, and the means become permissible.

        Years ago there was a business book out that pondered a concept called “The Peter Principle”. For those who have forgotten, or those who don’t know, it says that man is bound to rise to his level of incompetence. You are competent, therefore they will promote you, or move you ahead, and the step is repeated and repeated over and over agin until you are beyond your most attainable level of competence, and there you be, blocking empty rung on the ladder above you. Not wanting to move back down, but tenaciously hanging on to your rung regardless of what it takes. Then the game is no longer progression, but survival, and we all know the laws of survival, just flip on the TV and watch one of those “Survivor” type reality shows. It is the microcosm of the reality in which we live each day.

         It is truly only when the smart and dedicated die unto themselves and work to better everyone elses lot that we move forward. Unfortunately I think we are many, many decades and even centuries away from seeing that happen again. WE are in the middle of the “ME millenium”. Look around and tell me I’m wrong. Sure there are some hopeful signs, some “good deeds” being accomplished, but in the scheme of all things they just seem to be akin to using a thimble to drain the ocean.

    Alas the holidays appproach, and soon we can get on again with trying to survive. A respite is nice,….but then again is it a mere false hope of the future?

-30-

“All the scholastic scaffolding falls, as a ruined edifice, before a single word: faith.”

      – Napolean Bonaparte