The Ghost of Christmas Future???   For this holiday season, when one’s hope for the world and the potential goodness in mankind is met with the least resistance, I am left with an empty feeling and disillusionment. I have just celebrated half of my family Christmas and my clan is fully blessed with life, love, and possessions.  For my young adults, young families, and children full of innocence, I see in their faces the promise of a wonderful world to come.  However, I cannot escape the nagging worry in the back of my mind that this country went down a rabbit hole early last month and the prospects of escape are frighteningly daunting.

I am certainly not the man I should be in a religious sense, but even I of diminished moral character can sense the erosion of simple values and ethics in our nation.  We have allowed our elections to become contests of wit, wile, and deceit; with the victor oftentimes not the best candidate, just the sharpest.  And this devolution of our founder’s principles has gone on for a sufficiently long period of time that now these victors openly embrace this strategy and have no compunction whatsoever about openly celebrating their skullduggery.  We, the voting public, have been, and are being, played for fools and have become pawns in a game of “shape the message”, rather than the recipients of serious debate and ideas.

With our nation facing perhaps the most serious financial challenge since the great depression, our President’s last three budget proposals have failed to garner even a single vote from his own party.  Our duly elected Senators have failed to pass a budget in over two years.  And how do we react to these performances?  We extend their contracts, of course.  We gladly fulfill the role of the fool who is told nonsense for the truth and then expected to actually become the fool. 

I fear for our nation.  I fear for my children and grandchildren.  I fear for the principles of self-reliance and accountability.  I fear for our future.