ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE…
In a World in which young men use AK15 weapons to murder innocent school children, big-city gangs fill the night with gunfire, mindless attacks on unsuspecting people take place daily and the US Supreme Court turns its back on 50 years of precedent to do what the new members pledged to do to gain their positions, what are we to think of being on this Stage?
The latest statistics reflect the torrent of negatives about this nation’s present and future circulating through mass and social media
More than half of Americans no longer believe in our government…three-quarters of them believe this country is headed in the wrong direction.
It feels to so many that our society has splintered and is falling apart. Faced with a serious number of problems all coming at once, there seems to be a continuous confusion, an unending uneasiness, a national weakness and perhaps worst of all, doubt about the future.
Perhaps it all started with the Covid-19 pandemic which locked the World down, causing millions of deaths…in America most of all… shut down businesses, cost jobs, limited income and created a pervading fear that we were helpless.
But perhaps our weakness started years ago and Covid simply revealed it.
The foundation of our society – our systems – have been broken for years. America’s system of public health had few if any ready answers to the Covid pandemic. America’s physicians and scientists win Nobel Prizes but our overall healthcare system ranks 23rd in the world of industrial nations….but first as the most expensive.
We didn’t have face masks for personal protection nor ventilators for the desperately ill in our hospitals – China made them both.
City hospitals were overrun with patients. We saw the ambulances backed up. We saw the cold storage units outside hospitals holding the dead.
Our educational system cracked and could not teach our children remotely because teachers did not know how to teach remotely. Millions of kids lived in homes technically unequipped to receive any help from their schools.
Today our children have lost two years of school with no real makeup help available.
In NYC, 40,000 kids have “disappeared” from school.
In business our failure to manufacture anything but weapons caused a national supply chain disaster…and what has become the most destructive inflationary period since 1981. Massive cargo ships from China and Europe moored for months outside America’s seaports loaded with goods America no longer produces.
Big-rig trucks lined up for miles outside those docks for days as the docks themselves became overloaded.
And then came supply-chain shortages everywhere…from semiconductors that run cars to baby formula.
The inflationary period should come to an end (the Democrats are praying) because we now are overstocked with goods and the obvious gouging at the gasoline pump and in supermarkets should finally back off.
But the real inflation, the one that has caused an end to our Middle Class is in the ever-increasing cost of healthcare, higher education, child-care and home buying. These increases are staggering – over 200% in some of these areas. No one is talking about them. We are simply rolling over choked in debt.
And with the World clearly beginning to feel the ravages of climate change – 35 years ahead of the predictions…not just involving our children and grandchildren but ourselves … we watched America divided about whether to take vaccines, wear masks, and even whether Covid is real or just a government ploy to control. Unless you live in social media, you don’t know the half of it.
What we know now is that America is not only a debtor nation but a dependent one. Perhaps if you count the endless mass shootings and nighttime deaths across the nation, an unhinged one as well.
WHITHER THOU GOEST
Once upon a long time ago,” getting into politics” and running for office was essentially a public service effort.
But that changed after the Second World War and because few elected offices had any term limits – and all you had to do was get elected and reelected; holding political office became a career – a way of life.
In time attitudes about politicians placed them lower on the scale of public trust than used car salesmen.
In 2016 one of seventeen Republican candidates for President in a primary debate was able to say: ”Do you see these people on either side of me. They don’t care about you. They only care about themselves and want to be elected.” And none of them called him on it.
It was one of the few absolutely true things he ever said. He was talking to millions of Americans who believed as he did that government was corrupt and controlling and that those in government were losers who only were in it for themselves.
Like him, few cared about, respected and knew much about government but they liked what he said and how he said it.
And with full Karma in play four years later, he proved himself a prophet as his own behavior revealed that all he cared about was his reelection and would do and say anything to get it.
Whither thou goest
Donald Trump will announce his bid for election before the November midterm elections. If the Republicans score big gains in the House of Representatives or smaller ones in the Senate he will take credit for their victories…and if not, he will blame it on them for not listening to him.
Will Cruz, Hawley, DeSantis, Cotton and Pence have the nerve to take him on hoping to convince his believers that they are a better version of him?
Whither thou goest
Ted Cruz has already stated that the Supreme Court should never have approved marriage equality. Will the “new Chief Justice Clarence Thomas” force a vote to overturn that decision in their upcoming October term? Or will the Court’s conservatives delay that vote until after the midterms so as not to further enflame public opinion and votes against Republican candidates.
Here is the essential truth about the Supreme Court decision on abortion and what it may do to the other issues. Those were decisions that should have been made law by Congress. But Congress no longer works together to make laws important to a majority of the country.
The American people must vote for those candidates who will give them what they want. Marches, editorials and social media complaints aren’t enough… votes will do the job.
Whither thou goest
Here is their problem: Sanders lost both campaigns and never showed us how he could make those changes happen.
His idealistic followers haven’t the experience nor the education to know anything about making their demands happen: an end to fossil fuels, an end to racism, an end to Police violence etc.
These are liberal ideals deserving every consideration by legislators who know what to do about making them part of America. Labels – Democratic Socialists, progressives, Defund the Police – work on signs and in social media but fail badly in real life.
This split in the Democratic Party has destroyed much of the plans of the Biden Administration regarding climate change, child care, early childhood education, student debt and other essentially liberal programs needed to reestablish something of a middle class society once again.
Biden, Pelosi, Schumer et al seem unable to bring the party together. Their only hope seems to be a political disaster in the November midterms. Then maybe new leadership can start again.
Whither thou goest
Eric Adams was elected Mayor of New York because the city is riddled with crime on a daily basis – in the streets, the neighborhoods, in subway stations.
New Yorkers believed he had the experience to make it all stop so that people could return safely to all those empty office buildings in midtown, to all those empty restaurants and stores waiting for that return.
Was his election a mistake of false hopes? Adams spent fifteen years in the Police Department and never made an arrest. He was very good however at making certain he was heard lambasting the NYPD for not doing more to encourage social justice.
At this writing deadly shooting is a daily and nightly experience. Adams has not done two things that seem most critical to making the force one which doesn’t just solve crimes but tries to prevent them and protect the public from them.
He has not abolished the De Blasio act of taking immunity away from every member of the department. Without immunity anyone can sue any Policeman personally for any action and jeopardize his life doing so.
Adams has not put Policemen back on foot patrol. The Police are invisible in New York…actually invisible. Crimes are committed and some of them are solved. But no one believes New York City is safe. The Police show up only after a crime has been committed.
Mr. Adams believes he can dance, spin, dress and be a showman and this will somehow save him from being a failure and a one-term Mayor. He’s receiving large donations from real estate and casino operatives. Someone should tell him that this will not be enough to make him a Mayor that counted.
Whither thou goest
It’s clear that Congress will never outlaw the manufacture of military weapons for use by 21year old boys with severe mental and emotional problems.
But one of these days a local community will become so outraged that they will arrest the parents of a killer and put them away with him for the senseless murder of school children and innocents in a shopping center or supermarket.
The evidence of parental ignorance and even assistance is so over-whelming that it is just a matter of time. Until then, people will die.
The World is all a stage and we are but players on it.
Not happy players. Not satisfied players. Not players looking forward with confidence and certainty. Systems broken and a nation splintered and divided.
But America’s generosity of spirit is legion. It and not a Constitution or a politician has carried us to World fame and power. Despite our unworkable immigration policies, we are the future for millions who were not born here but believe in our promise.
They want to play on our Stage, become one with us and while there is much for them to learn, we can learn too and remember who and what we are.
Until then climate change is not our worst enemy.
We are.