Looking ahead at our future nation

Isn’t it strange how we condemn other nations for the abuses that they wreak upon their citizens while we ignore our homeless and our very poor? Where the hell do we get off playing such ‘goody-two-shoes’ and about how moral we are when we allow travesties such as this to be an ingrained part of our society? We have more people in prison than any other nation; more violence than any other nation, and we go around touting how great we are? Okay, so we have the third largest population in the world, but I will not accept that as an argument for how we allow our own share of abuse in the United States.

Without taking into account nuclear capability, the United States is still considered to be number one in global firepower. We complain that the sequester will take one of our aircraft carriers out of operation, yet we still more carriers than the next ten nations combined. We have more fighter aircraft than the next seven countries combined. The list goes on and on. Because we are, supposedly, the richest nation in the world, we have more of the big boy toys than other nations. Are you beginning to hear the word, “paranoia,” in the back of your minds?

Unfortunately, we don’t really appear to understand that it’s not the one with the most who is going to ‘win,’ whatever the hell that word is supposed to mean in today’s complex world society. As a nation, we appear to be of the opinion that if we have the bestest and the mostest, that will cause others to stand down and be afraid of us. On September 11, 2001, we learned that is not the case. Those who hate us will find a way to hurt us, not by open and declared warfare, but by occasional punches to the gut that hurt twice as much because they are so unexpected.  Bertrand Russell’s wrote, “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” It is so perfect. And yet, we continue to conduct our wars in the same manner that they have been conducted for centuries, throwing our young men and women into the fray as cannon fodder, to be ambushed and assaulted at a time and choosing of our opponents. How stupid can we be? Perhaps it’s time we just let these idiots kill each other and instead of building bigger and better toys to go after the ‘baaad guys,’ we should be concentrating on how we protect our borders and our cities and towns within our own country. If we spent the cost of a single aircraft carrier, somewhere around $11 billion, on protecting our border with Mexico, we might just be able to slow the drug traffic that is being so successfully conducted. Take the cost of a couple of carriers – holy shit; that’s 22 billion dollars – we could probably do one hell of a lot more. We’d still be ahead of six or seven other nations in our fleet capacity.  Just think of how much of our nation’s infrastructure could be rebuilt and modernized if we merely took an intelligent look at how we are currently spending our dollars and cents.

Please don’t misunderstand my intentions. I am all for being prepared to defend our country “against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” but I’m also sufficiently practical to recognize that we cannot continue to use 20^th Century thinking when we are living in the 21^st Century when one nuclear weapon can wipe out the best of our good intentions in seconds. Our thinking should not be how we can scare the crap out of potential nation enemies outside our borders, which we don’t really do anyhow, and direct our thinking inward. What are we doing to protect our own citizens from attack from within? We are, in all probability, doing a hell of a lot more than you or I will ever know. Here’s another question: How are we ensuring that our men and women who have served in our all-volunteer armed services receive proper training and sufficient funds to be integrated back into a civilian lifestyle, one which is so radically different from military life that most who have never served can’t begin to comprehend.

As a people, Americans are very private. We abhor ‘big brother’ watching over our shoulder. We tend to look down our collective noses at the police and fire, until we are in grave need of them and then we bitch and moan because they didn’t get to us fast enough. We are selfish, greedy children who don’t wish to take responsibility for our own wellbeing and who most assuredly don’t want to be call to account for our actions when they affect others negatively. Since 2003, citizens living on a peninsula called Plum Island in Massachusetts have been told that their houses were in danger of being washed away by New England’s crazy winter weather. The Army Corps of Engineers has told them; environmental groups have told them, and, in their defense, they did reinforce the foundations of some of the homes that were on the water. However, ten years of being told didn’t help when several homes were washed away or declared uninhabitable this year. Residents appeared shocked that something like this could happen; now they are looking for outside help to take care of them. You had ten years of warnings; you were told this was going to happen; you watched as the erosion took place; and now you want help from outside? You did not take responsibility. You forgot one basic premise: Don’t mess with Mother Nature; she will always, always win!

If Americans ever knew the extent to which they are surveiled in public on a daily basis, they would be shocked and horrified…yet it is not enough.  In Boston recently, a bus driver was assaulted by a gang of youths. Now the manhunt is on to determine who the little gangbangers were. Had there been a couple of cameras on the bus, the police would, in all probability, have the mob in custody by now. When cameras are eventually installed in every bus and subway, there will be many who will take offense. They will view the cameras as an invasion of privacy and not as a form of protection.

We have a great many problems in the United States of America. We can’t solve each and every one of them overnight. Protecting our homeland and our way of life may be the top priority but the manner in which we do it deserves to be reevaluated on a regular basis. Building fiefdoms is not how we do things, particularly in our military, and we compare our might to that of other nations, we appear to be vastly overcompensating. It’s time we addressed some of the other problems facing our nation. Our roads and bridges are falling apart. We are accepting into our law enforcement ranks people who are not only not qualified, but in some cases more dangerous than the criminals they are supposed to be pursuing. It’s possible that a living wage might attract more people into our protective agencies as well as into our teaching corps. Homelessness and poverty in our “rich” country are an increasing problem and one that we appear to be ignoring. Those are just a few of our issues.

My time is limited. I can only hope that there are a few young curmudgeons out there who will pick up the banner and scream loudly enough that our nation’s leaders will be forced to listen. “Common sense isn’t all that common,” said Voltaire. Today’s politicians are living proof of that. Let’s hope that tomorrow’s leaders will take note.