Looking For A Break In The Clouds.



Looking For A Break In The Clouds.  Last November’s election results marked a lifetime low point for the confidence I place in our institutions of government and the American electorate in general.  Had I been prone to compulsive alcohol consumption, I would right about now be (hopefully) graduating from my AA class.  I was not thus prone and only had to deal with deep depression.  However, I have slowly crept back into the daily news cycle, once again track professional assessments of the next election cycle, and try to track the “flavor du jour” of our Congress and Administration in WDC.  I cling to the notion that our nation is of such novel design that the idiocy of any particular President and the commensurate “Fools on the Hill” is incapable of doing irreparable damage and we will bounce back after a long, dark night.  So…being tired of hearing myself bitch, whine, and complain about all things in general; it is time to say some positive things for the record.

It is indeed a glorious country that permits the type of verbal and written abuse that our last two presidents have endured.  The privilege of voicing one’s opinion, regardless of how adverse to the ruling authority it may be or how plainly stupid it may be, is indeed a luxury not held by all across this planet.

Hope springs eternal, and so do elections.  If you are like me and find it increasingly difficult to tolerate our current President, you can take solace in the fact that he only has 3.5 more years to continue his grand experiment in auto-pilot government.  Likewise, we can replace our Representatives and Senators on a regular basis and, perhaps not yet up to the optimum extent, have learned how to do it on fairly regular basis over the last few years.

Despite the ongoing discussions to the contrary, you can pick up a paper in most any American town and find some “help wanted” ads.  You can apply yourself and given any kind of a fair shake, create an opportunity for you and yours to have a better life and a decent future.  If you sacrifice and pay your dues, you can even look forward to a retirement period in life where you can perhaps pursue things you didn’t have time for earlier.  Yes…compound interest and social security still provide reasonable ingredients for good times in our later years.

This is a most beautiful and blessed country and most of us don’t even have to leave our own states to travel good roads and see sights that make us catch our breath.  The good people who wrote all those songs about the beauty of America didn’t make that stuff up. 

Any day of the week, we can gather with friends and neighbors to worship as we see fit.  It is true that religious persecution refuses to die entirely and occasionally rears its ugly head in heinous fashion; but if your faith is strong, you can practice it in America.

The wars… the senseless, stupid, exercises in political adventurism that waste the precious blood of our youth…we fight are still wars on other shores.  Yes, terrorism has crept into our culture and our society; but we do not live in constant threat of daily rocket attacks or IEDs on the way to the grocery.  People still want to immigrate to THIS country and most of those that leave, or threaten such actions, end up returning or not leaving at all.

And finally…even though we argue constantly about how much of our earnings should be ours and how much should go to the government;   even though we heatedly contemplate how much privacy we will give up for increased security; even though we are troubled by the direction of our children’s education and their ethical and moral direction…our youth offer us all a wonderful chance for a better world.  The promise and innocence of every child holds a limitless potential for better things in life.  If you can’t see that…well, you just need to look a little bit harder.  Are the children failing us or are we failing the children?