As the World Turns.

As the World Turns.  Just got back to the house from the garden this morning; potatoes are up, beans are up, cucumbers are up, tomato and pepper plants are doing just fine.  Pasture has performed real well this spring with plenty of rain and the mild winter we just had let most folks carry about 25 percent of their hay into this year.  The pear tree is absolutely loaded, the apple trees were chock full of blooms earlier, as were the peach trees.  The cattle are slicking off and dropping calves.  Even our old country horses are shedding their winter coats and looking like they could run in the Derby this Saturday.  The grandkids are playing in the park and starting into the summer baseball and softball seasons.  Wheat is ripening in the fields and corn is starting to sprout up in it geometrical rows and patterns.  All in all, it seems that Mother Nature has her house in pretty good order, in spite of civilization’s best effort to screw it up.

I noticed that we lost a Navy Seal in Iraq to ISIS.  I thought that war was over with……..

Bernie beat Hillary (again) in Indiana, but Hillary apparently remains the inevitable Democratic candidate (notwithstanding a federal indictment).  Tell me again…why do we have primaries?

Donald Trump has eliminated all of his primary competition.  In my memory, no single candidate has proven more skeptics (myself included) wrong than Trump.  I still do not fully comprehend how the Republican Party has arrived at this point with this nominee, but then…it is somehow in sync with the rest of the world.

I think that both consciously and subconsciously, the mainstream media has lent support to the Trump and Clinton campaigns through their bias; and who could really blame them.  Can you imagine a more entertaining contest than Trump v. Clinton?  The people who are really facing a conundrum are the down-ticket Representatives and Senators that have to run in the shadow of their presidential nominees.  It must be torture indeed to depend so desperately on the national party for funding and support while having to defend the idiot on your team running for President.

As confirmation of the true weirdness in the world today, I found myself this week actually agreeing with a statement made by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC Chairperson.  I could not agree more with her that Independents have no business voting in the Democratic primaries.  I would add that they also have no business voting in the Republican primaries either.  I am an Independent and feel no entitlement towards helping parties to which I declined membership select their candidates.  It puzzles me why the national parties would allow this in the first place.

The NASCARization of American sports continues; that being the arbitrary and capricious officiating of the contests and the “good ole boy” governing of the organizations.  Pick your choice from the carnival: the NFL with “what is a catch”, “Deflategate”, or draft day “Bong hits”; MLB with the proper amount of “spontaneous emotion” on the field and the PED dilemma; the NBA with that old sideshow attraction of “whistle swallowing” at the end of games or the “never-ending” saga of the playoffs; the NHL and its unholy alliance with vicious hits and the “flavor of the week” punishments meted out for them; the NCAA with its “3 Ring Circus” administration of fines, sanctions, investigations, and total rape of collegiate athletes; or the PGA with its continuing “Tiger-withdrawal symptoms” and the desperate search for his able successor (while not-so-secretly yearning for  his triumphant return).    The trending political correctness and social consciousness of the sports world has reached Keystone Kops levels and it is a monumental tribute to the games themselves that the events have survived, still thrive, and continue to demand the rapt attention of the public.   Then again…it might just be a symptom of the pitiful emptiness that haunts many American lives. 

In spite of each side cherry-picking statistics to support their respective agenda, it is hard to see much hope for our economy.  As I look around the world I inhabit, I see more empty business locations than I can ever remember.  Full-time employment with decent pay is on the decline.   The Fed’s “low to no interest” policy elicits complaints from my older friends that they get no return on their life savings while it encourages my younger friends to load up on debt, ignore the potential perils of future monetary policy, and simply look to making “next month’s payment”.  To me, the U.S. economy is like a dead fish floating on the pond; it stinks, everyone sees it is there, but nobody is willing to wade in and get it.  I remain convinced that for all the political rhetoric we hear daily from candidates of all stripes and at all levels, the one critical thing we have to straighten out in this country is employment.  The key to creating a society that has pride in itself, understands and practices accountability, treats itself with respect and dignity, and can learn to appreciate the truly good things in this life is….a job; a job that demands ethics, discipline, and rewards a worker with a sustainable wage.  Until our two morally and ethically bankrupt national political parties come to grips with this reality, we will continue to wander around leaderless in this nonsensical wasteland of governmental comedy. 

Life is ephemeral.  It is a sad reality that most of us spend the bulk of our time on this earth obsessed with the business of surviving and never really grasp this concept until our later years.  The shrinking of our global community has, in many ways, helped us all to appreciate the diversity and complexity of this planet; but it has also served to make us privately solitary, colder, more independent, and less comfortable with handling our basic human emotions.  When math goes from pencil and paper to calculator, when news goes from reading articles and books to glancing at (or listening to) headlines, when human communication goes from eye contact and human touch to texting and hooking up…we have lost something; something that was worth keeping.  Our nation’s greatest resource has always been, and remains, its people.  No greater responsibility lies more heavily with our elected officials than to create an environment in this country that nurtures the American spirit and creates the possibility of human success in all endeavors.