Variety is the Spice!
(Aah, he’s at it again!)Our DNAs and experiential yardsticks give us our make of the world in which we live. The disparity of views is Amazing, Bewildering, and Comical – the ABC Syndrome, if you will, opens wide the doors for our many amusements and biased conversations, polemic and otherwise. Somewhere in the ancient history of our country, we came up with the phrases, ‘Freedom of Speech’, ‘Equality for All’, ‘Free Enterprise’, and ‘We, The People’.
Okay, where is he going with this gibberish, you ask?
However we got there, each of us holds to some beliefs about our world – how we choose a faith, how we choose which political party’s platform to accept, how we choose the friends we have, how we choose the movies and sports events we want to see, the books we read, on and on.
A simple man, with not the brightest light to shine, all my life I’ve been, well, amazed, bewildered, and comically amused about all the disparities of thought in our country. It is difficult for me to understand how I can believe as strongly as I do about certain matters while others believe just as strongly another way. Really, I want a fair, good, and just country, like most people seem to want. The ways of getting to that fair, good, and just country, depending on which side you are on, can sometimes appear so condescendingly wrong and without good historical rationale.
So, we have Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, fundamentalists, atheists, the majority, the minority, all verbally slugging it out while we go to hell in a proverbial hand basket. The mad people across the oceans and seas in the Middle East have been fighting forever, and now we have the Islamic Terrorists factions chopping off heads, burning people alive, and threatening our own shores…to be sure, they have already been here and left their deathly calling cards. It is simple for me, people want to kill me, chop my head off, we kill them – not in the name of anything holy, but just because it is the only way to stop the ideological idiots that say ‘their way or the highway’.
Like I say, I am a simple man and my mind purveys simple truths. What do so many people in the high offices know that I do not know? When does the madness I perceive end? If variety is the spice of life, it seems to me we’ve gone to the outer edges…
We elect/hire people for our various governments – local, state, federal – and we expect them to always have ‘we the people’ interests in every decision they make. In one way or another some of these people we elect/hire get some sort of power ‘kick’ and veer off into greed and incompetency…that’s when it becomes politics and not good management. Some of these people we elect/hire to work for us make their jobs about them – delivering perks to themselves that we do not have and lose what noble ideology they might have initially embraced.
These are the outer edges where temptations come calling, where the people we elect/hire forget that there are limits to spending ‘we the people’ dollars, that there is just so much they can do to equal the playing field for all of us…there must be programs to help those who truly need, and there should be fail-safe systems in place to preclude fraud and manipulation. The United States has a Constitution that is the blueprint for a free society. Some believe that Constitution is being taken apart by those who want not ‘we the people’ but a massive system of bureaucracies to control our lives.
There are games we can buy to amuse ourselves. Our freedom and liberty comes at a high price and are not games – they are guarantees. The people we elect/hire should not take them to the outer edges for their own grandiose socialistic theories. Change can be good. Change can also be bad…therein lies the conundrum. Some of our people go to their jobs and enjoy their social activities with very little factual knowledge about the great country in which they live. The time is past due to overhaul a unionized Education system and allow ‘choices’ for the families who want the best for their children.
Politicians can be good. Politicians can be bad. In our world today where we fight a new kind of war, ‘Islamic Terrorism’, we seem to forget the meaning of the word, ‘illegal’, as in ‘illegal immigrants’, and our borders are porous and in dire need of being made secure. Yet, it’s a political football tossed around in so many directions by so many of those we elect/hire to handle such business. Security should be the number one priority for elected/hired people – along with Education, Economy and Jobs, a strong Military, Intelligence Gathering…
Is it not imperative that we move back from the ‘outer edges’ of political thought and return to our fundamental ideals and values?
It seems I have given a sophomoric lecture about the state of our union, about the politicians who play at the ‘outer edges’, perhaps merely a rant and rave with little substance and short on answers. What if I could be wrong about all of which I have written here? What if what I so stubbornly hold to be the truth is not the truth? My life’s experiences, the words of history, force me to believe so. Words can be empty and without any force, but they are here in Twilight my freedom of expression.
It is my hope that these words do not offend anyone… It is just that our country, in my thinking, is at a critical juncture in history. I truly believe we need new leaders who can manage the people’s affairs, have a great sense of history’s lessons, and a sincere desire to constitutionally act with transparency and truth.
It should be apparent to even ‘dinosaurs’ like me that change can be good, but let the change not repeat the mistakes of historical records. Who among us wish to live without our freedom and liberty?
Billy Ray Chitwood – February 7, 2015
Joe Public’s Political Perspective is the book I’m featuring this week. It has not the pundit’s words, the political analyst’s words, simply the thoughts of a citizen who is concerned about the future of his country – for his children, grandchildren, his friends and neighbors. Some will perhaps enjoy the simple musings. Others will not. But here it is for your consideration.
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The Final Curtain 
I could take almost every word you say and change it to mean here Billy Ray. The politicians seem far more interested in nest feathering and finding was to dodge taxes than in creating a better, fairer society for us all. They’ve also conveniently forgotten on who’s behalf they’re supposed to act and why they were put in power.
I think we’re going backwards nor forwards.
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Could not agree more, good David. Wishing you all the very best.
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I’m not sure if killing the supposed enemy is going to bring peace. It is, of course, often the emotional answer, the ‘knee-jerk’ response. Sometimes people as individuals or in groups do dreadful things, and we, understandably, want to punish them. Unfortunately, our response often brings us down to the same level as the perpetrators, and the circle continues, and the possibility of peace glides further and further away. I do not have the answer, Billy Ray, but I don’t think that the answer is more killing. Eventually, somewhere, someone is going to have to be brave enough to break the circle; then, and only then, will there be any chance of our achieving world peace.
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One question, Diane… If you or a loved one is about to be savagely beheaded or burned alive and you could kill the barbarians first, would you not? AND, what does ‘brave enough to break the circle’ really mean? When people tell me it is their way or head chopping/burning, I will always kill them first if it is within my power. For me, this is real, not theory! These are bug, mad animals that we to be rid – at least, in a civilized society.
Thanks for your comments.
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I do understand you, Billy Ray: it is not an easy question (and one that many of those who oppose conscription have had to try to answer). Being ‘brave enough to break the circle’ simply means being able to move away from ‘an eye for an eye’ mentality. I do not say that it is easy, but if we look back over all the centuries that have passed, we must acknowledge the fact that ‘eye for an eye’ really does not work.
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You know me, Billy, no offense taken whatsoever. Well said, my friend. xo
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Thank you, sweet Jill. xo
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