Posted on 02/24/2012 9:52:17 AM PST by hoagy62
I’m permanently glum. I don’t like being permanently glum, but I am a news junky and very much aware of our nation’s rapid political and societal decline, so I remain glum over the future of our nation.
I hear this is normal for old farts, and I’m 53 so I qualify. So I know I sound my age.
But it is hard to endure the rapid changes.
50 years ago most people were married and most children had fathers.
50 years ago most births were to married couples and most children weren’t bastards.
50 years ago the number of lazy bums were smaller and if you didn’t work, you went without and were scorned.
50 years ago they still taught US history in school and emphasized our Contitutional rights, and the founders were still considered brilliant heros, rather than racist religious zealots.
50 years ago we were still a manufacturing powerhouse.
50 years ago most employees had company pensions.
50 years ago there weren’t no-knock raids, weren’t random DUI checkpoints, and the cops didn’t shoot your playful dogs.
50 years ago there was no TSA, grandma didn’t get strip searched, and you could accompany family right to the airplane boarding gate.
50 years ago you could chop down a tree or fill a pond in your yard without the EPA stopping or fining or jailing you.
50 years ago you never saw a homosexual TV or movie character unless they were a bad guy or were mentally deficient..
50 years ago CEOs didn’t salary and benefits didn’t dwarf the GDP of small nations.
50 years ago most moms were home raising their children to be polite, well mannered, productive and honorable.
50 years ago we didn’t have the EPA and the Dept. of Education and Homeland Security.
50 years ago we hadn’t murdered over 50 million babies.
50 years ago you could buy a gun from the back of a catalog and bring it to school in the cab of your pickup truck for target practice.
50 years ago you could swap motors in your car without the EPA stopping you.
50 years ago you would be called insane if you wanted to waste billions of dollars saving some remote species of animal.
50 years ago a vegetarian was a person that couldn’t afford meat.
50 years ago Christmas was still praised and celebrated in government buildings and schools and nobody said, “Happy Ramadan” or “Happy Kwanzaa” and NOBODY said, “Happy Holidays”. It was “Merry Christmas”.
50 years ago Islam was a unknown and nobody thought about it let alone bent over backwards to accomodate.
50 years ago, battlefield POWs would not have their own lawyers to insure their kosher meals and prayer rugs and that their religious books were touched by the infidel. We would have laughed at the absurdity.
50 years ago everyone still accepted that the communists were our enemies.
50 years ago socialism was a bad word.
50 years ago nobody would would have accepted governmetn controlled health care and socialized medicine.
50 years ago you would do anything to avoid welfare and food stamps, and were deeply ashamed if you had to take government handouts. It was stigmatized.
50 years ago people would laugh in your face and send you walking if you suggested man had the power to control Earth’s temperature with CO2 or called CO2 a pollutant. They would have laughed their asses off.
50 years ago the UN didn’t own property in the USA or have their flags flying over schools and government buildings.
50 years ago the Girl Scouts didn’t promote homosexuality.
50 years ago your toilet flushed the first time every time.
50 years ago you could get a good flow from your shower head.
50 years ago you wern’t subjected to Diversity Training and Sexual Harrassment brainwashing. You weren’t called racist just for disgreeing with black people or sexist just for disagreeing with a woman.
50 years ago we didn’t have political correctness police police regulating everything we said and thought.
50 years ago we didn’t burn our food for fuel. We used fuel.
50 years ago there weren’t gun registration lists (not before 1968).
50 years ago people didn’t expect their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be able to mooch off government welfare - multiple generations raised solely on the government dole.
50 years ago CO2 was plant food, not an EPA regulated pollutant.
50 years ago children did not have to read and recite the Koran in schools or have to see how it feels to wear a burka.
50 years ago soldiers didn’t have to wear stomach padding to make them sensitive to the feeligns of their pregnant comrades.
50 years ago we didn’t imprison soldiers for slapping a dead enemy.
50 years ago we didn’t imprison border patrolman for defending themselves against Mexican drug dealers.
50 years ago, people in Pheonix didn’t have to worry about being kidnapped for ransom by Mexican gangs.
50 years ago we were not swamped with illegal immigrants pushing down wages and draining billions from the welfare coffers.
50 years ago dead people didn’t vote in large numbers.
50 years ago the media at least pretended to be unbiased and sought to disguise their propaganda.
50 years ago we didn’t have to pass laws to find out what is in them.
50 years ago there would be impeachment procedings if the US Senate had failed to pass a budget.
50 years ago Americans would love to have been the world’s only superpower.
50 years ago we couldn’t have too much oil or gas.
50 years ago very few people hated corporations or wanted them taxed out of existence.
50 years ago very few people hated the rich, and just wanted to be one of them.
50 years ago most of our goods were US made and didn’t come from China, only the cheapest and worst crap was Japanese or Chinese.
50 years ago the police didn’t tote assault weapons, night vision goggles, battering rams, and black combat gear.
50 years ago most people attended Church.
50 years ago college meant something and people were there to get a marketable degree.
50 years ago companies were loyal to employees and employees were loyal to companies.
50 years ago a bum was worthly of scorn, not acceptance.
50 years ago we were not awash in homeless people taking over our parks and shopping centers.
50 years ago drug abuse was a fringe problem.
50 years ago a high school graduate could earn a middle class living.
50 years ago teachers and professors were not tools of the liberal propaganda brainwashing machine.
50 years ago your social security number was rarely ever seen let alone used.
50 years ago our natual resources were not put off limits under the excuse they were UN protected landmarks.
50 years ago the government could not put you in jail for hating someone, or for hate crimes.
50 years ago there would have been overwhelming outrage if the governmentn had destroyed hundreds of California farmers to save a 3-inch long fish.
50 years ago we did not sue businesses into bankruptcy just because they didn’t have wheelchair ramp access.
50 years ago school kids knew George Washington and Thomas Jefferson but didn’t know Nelson Mandella and Cesar Chavez.
50 years ago children had heros like George Washington and Superman, not Che Guevara and Gordon Gecko.
The reason I am depressed is because the rapid decline of America is depressing. There is no way around that.
Do you want to know how I survive thinking abou this? I am eternally grateful to the Lord God and to Jesus Christ that I was allowed to be born among the last generation of Americans to be still relatively free. I kiss the ground with joy and gratitude that I was not born 100 years from now with government snooping cameras in our homes and cars, needing government permission to travel, with the government telling us how much energy we can use, and how much water we can use, and what foods we can’t eat because the government owns our health, etc.
This is what gets me REALLY good and truly depressed — thinking about future generations of Americans marching into the Gulags and the Concentration Camps, in all but name anyway. I really grieve for the complete loss of liberty and privacy that is coming to future generations.
I grieve that we couldn’t keep our Republic, as Benjamin Franklin duly warned.
I grieve that we could not safeguard the cherished rare gift of freedome for futures generations and let the central government become an all-powerful tyrant.
I’ve been to Texas three times, all for vacations. I really like it down there. I’d move there IF I could find a job there FIRST. Being a drain on society is NOT a life’s goal, if you know what I mean.
In any case, thank you. It’s something to consider
Jobs are plentiful, at least where I am, most employers are desperate for good employees. Want a link to the want ads??
Freedom park, my hometown:
50 years ago my president didn’t bow to the Saudi King.
50 years ago my government was not actively trying to necessarily cause energy costs to skyrocket.
50 years ago my president didn’t support Islamic fundamentalists and encourage and assist the conversion of independent nations into fundamentalist Islamic states.
50 years ago my president didn’t seek to weaken the US military.
50 years ago my president didn’t stack the federal government with like-minded communists.
50 years ago the government was not trying to silence conservative talk on the radio.
50 years ago my president was not actively trying to bankrupt the nation.
50 years ago children weren’t expelled from bringing asthma inhalers to school, or using a butter knife to cut their fruit, or tracing a picture of their hand on paper in the shape of a gun.
50 years ago schools didn’t throw away your children’s bag lunch and force them to eat from the school cafeteria.
50 years ago the government didn’t make doctors ask you if you owned any guns.
50 years ago CPS didn’t take your kids away for being too fat.
50 years ago there weren’t GPS trackers in all of our cars and telephones.
50 years ago they still taught US history in school and emphasized our Contitutional rights,
Texas history is taught at many grade levels, with a full year's worth in 7th grade.
50 years ago socialism was a bad word.
In Texas, most progressives don't venture far from Dallas, El Paso, or Houston. In Texas, liberal = Conservative Democrat.
50 years ago we didn’t burn our food for fuel. We used fuel.
Texas has plenty of oil and natural gas.
I don't have time to be glum. Not with the two fine young Texas men that I'm helping to raise: my 10 YO son, and 18 MO grandson (in addition to my two adult children). There's a lot of work to be done, and spending time with them is my reward.
Bump and mark for later.
Amen!
The only duty we have to “keeping informed” is stuff we can effect. Anything other than that is just background noise. Don’t obsess, there’s tons of this stuff you can ignore because you can’t change it. And remember news is very deliberately oriented towards bad news, good news is boring and people won’t pay for it. So there’s tons of positive stuff happening in the world around you that will never be reported. If you’re too busy watching the bad news to participate in the good that’s even more reason to learn to say “screw it” and step away from the news industry. A good habit to get into is to completely ignore all news for a while, like when you’re on vacation, let the world spin without you, anything really important will still be going on when you get back. Helps keep perspective.
Now there’s a beautiful police lineup.
I always preferred Nexium to Tums, but years of that cost me both hips....
If you think todays problems are bad just read homer_simpson’s daily wwii threads. We got no problems compared to total global warfare....
>>>50 years ago we didn’t burn our food for fuel. We used fuel.
We don’t today. After taking the parts of the food that can be made into fuel, we do that, then take what’s left, and put it into the food chain as animal feed, and common ingredients in multiple other foods. Your “we don’t burn our food” meme is bullshit.
So what part of that kernel of corn is left for the small farmer's chicken feed? AND it is 'socialism' for US tax payers to pay anybody to grow corn... Corn fuel does NOT 'burn' the same as fossil fuels.
First of all it is hard to not get depressed.
But...I was reading The Real George Washington this afternoon and several things struck me. The level of ‘faith in God,’ and I thought to myself...
That is what is missing, not just in our society...but in our Patriots too.
You see, what is wrong with our country and world right now is so big...no mere mortal man fix it. It will take a divine miracle.
And so one needs to turn the matters over to God, humble ourselves before Him and let Him take the wheel.
So is that yellow rocks they are spreading from March 2011?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRQZO6S-MZo&feature=related
We're still forced to see our tax dollars used to support liberals groups like PBS and NPR - but we have the joy of knowing they feel some guilt about their non-stop bias and hatred of conservatives... It's almost a win.
Lighten up - it not only could be worse - it's always been worse.
PING TO YOU!
This sounds like fun :)
Ditto. Somehow someone here should find a video of President Ronald Reagen’s first inaugural speech and post it here. By God that was a motivational one for sure!
Good question; when you find the answer, let me know.
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