If there is one thing these last three or four years have proven… We don’t elect politicians, we elect head lemmings.
There is a scale of gradual growth incline, one generation raising the next one up. That scale was lost somewhere in this digital age and a few generations were systematically, and sacrificially skipped, or lost. The problem with this is now we have a couple of generations who have a hard time understanding each other. With that the incline scale drops like a cliff and the decisions and actions taken by politicians are just like a diving board for us to have fun in our freefall. I had written before about not getting a Mulligan, a do-over on all of this. When things eventually change in the White House, the damage will still be there.
This is not trying to be alarmist or overtly negative, this is history, this is the point where the mettle of the country has surely gone to hell. A struggle for civility, in a civilization that is rejecting it at every turn. The issues not decided at the ballot box will still be seething, the problems we wrote about in 2014 will still be there in 2024 and like everything the problems keep getting bigger and bigger. This is who we are, a mess, everyone has got an idea, none seem to get done, nobody wants to do the work… No, that’s not the right word… people are afraid to change the system because somewhere in the mess we are in, people are tied to it in some way as it stands now. We will always be in some manner because we are governed by it, but it’s ours right? It’s ours to change, it’s ours to shape the civility, the standards and rules… Lemmings, not the ones in the real world, but the ones from fable where the almost entranced jumping off a cliff is their Rapture. Gosh Bob! Who do you want to elect to lead us over the cliff? Bob;” Well I don’t want to jump off the cliff, but it’s not like I can change it somehow?”
The ones that will run for the top spot will display their version of diving boards. A short one here, a long one there, all meant to do the same thing. Direct the manner and direction the jump is going to take place. Harriet wants to jump off the right, Bob, the left, and the other 378 want to it somewhere else. We are less and less living our lives than surviving a system, within an institution, that we own. It’s like an asylum run by the patients and the staff having to do their bidding, laughable, but scarily similar. That is where the real battle is, understanding that it’s not just the people in power that need to change, but we do as well, that’s what I mean by work, the work needing to be done. We are the people that get things right, seven or eight times out of ten. But we are then being held to the lowest factors by the two or three that wind up on the news, in courts, and made a spectacle of. Because we want to see how bad we really are, our morbidity and self-destructive habits, it’s an adrenaline rush for some, the Lemming genetics.
We complain about bad politicians, and we are then shown, and everyone is made out to be a bad politician. We complain about guns and murder, and we are “entertained” by murder this, gun happy that, a crime of some kind, the perpetual news. We complain about Healthcare, angered by the need of teams of doctors usually going to third world nations, going to our heartlands instead. Heck, that’s the way they voted, drive three hundred miles and wait for 23 hours to see a general practitioner… in Wisconsin. We complain about the economy, and do nothing but buy into the next thing that comes along. We complain about race and religion and how others are so different, while doing and proving that folks are all about the same, the good, the bad and the ugly. Same Lemming genetics, it’s a human thing, not race, religion, or location.
In a time that confuses patriotism and nationalism as two family members, we are being shown everything Nazi this and Hitler that, while the hammering at our own democracy has turned into a mechanical droning. We argue about the sexes and how everything is so unfair to one sex or the other, while dismissing that whole being a human is hard bit. We want to save the world and the climate, while turning areas of the planet into warzones, and disaster relief zones, waves of displaced people immigrating to a place where they can just live. I wonder where the wall will be built to keep us out from the same… living? From the largest issues facing us either immediately or in the future, to the smallest of decisions on the town councils, the game is more important than the communities, there are no checks and balances left anymore. We don’t get a Mulligan on governing, we don’t get one on the damage that is done, we do get a chance to really see this for what it is, a part of history, as important as the Civil Rights Era, The Revolution, and sadly even the Civil War. It is also a part of history as much as the first New Deal, the Industrial Revolution, and the Internet Age. It’s going to be confusing, it’s not always going to make sense, but it is what we get, no Mulligan.
With a clash of generations that typically want the same things as far as breathing, eating and shelter. You could toss in some security in there too, but if this “security” is what we get from building up a ridiculously large military, then maybe we could look at what security means again? We have removed the local newspapers and journalism, we get sketchy regional news, and our national news outlets are all too busy stumbling over revenue to cover anything pertinent. These things were part of our security, being brought to its knees by the very populace that is now expecting a do over, a Mulligan. Sorry, no magic machine to put these things back, or a new version of them, it takes work and determination. For every soldier a country has as its war machine, it should balance that with an equally sizeable journalistic/watchdog/truth-speaking machine. Or else we get here, confused about some stuff, unsure of the truth, and watching the Lemming ways simply engulf the masses.
This is history, in one hundred years I am more than positive they will believe we were all stoned off our behinds to have voted for the people we did. They won’t be us because this is untenable, change is a constant and change is what we are going to get, like it or not. That is what we get, we get a chance to change, a chance to do something to ensure our lives are more than a number on a population sign. We get a chance to move the ship, not jump the shark, we are not going to get away with any quick answers anymore, they have to be long and thought out. Living in a meme world will only give you a two five second attention span and we are going to need someone to start thinking full time. This is the work, the chance, the opportunities we are afforded because of those that worked tirelessly before us. We owe the same thing to the future, we owe them a place to live, a place to call home, a future for their futures. The things that need changing may be too big for us to handle anymore, when you are crazy, you don’t know you are crazy. We get a chance to do some real thinking beyond our emotional tantrums, indignation and consternation, but we don’t get a Mulligan with these Lemming ways.