When my daughter was young, while I was laboring in the construction industry, she use to say to me, "Daddy, you go to work when it is night-night, and you come home when it is night-night."
My response was usually, "Tell me about it, kid."
After the mortgage and housing collapse in 2008, I changed professions just so that I could afford to pay the bills. The housing industry had dried up, so I was working, if I was lucky, a couple times a week. My pay had dropped to a mere pittance. I am the type, however, that has always been willing to do whatever it takes to take care of my family. I take pride in my self-reliance, and ability to do so without running to government for assistance. This is not to say I haven't received a bit of help along the way. Family, and church groups, when times were toughest, were there for me. And in turn, when able, we have also, voluntarily, given to those struggling.
Since the economic downturn, I have changed my job, spending the last five and a half years behind the wheel of a transfer - a big rig that hauls sand and gravel.
From the early morning, before most have rustled from their beds, until the evening hours, after the average citizen has already finished dinner, I drive a big rig, carrying sand and stone to various sites filled with construction workers, and sometimes to homeowners who are filling an area with material for necessity, or aesthetics. For an average of twelve to fourteen hours daily I drive in the Southern California traffic. Sometimes more, and sometimes less, but rarely much less. Drivers weave in and out of the lanes, paying scant attention to the big rigs, except to get in the way, or to insert themselves into the path for the premeditated reason of simply angering the trucker.
On some of the freeways in the Los Angeles Basin, a lane of traffic will become an off-ramp, and to continue onward one must merge to the left, until a new lane to the right emerges again to serve as a temporary slow lane. It was upon one of these off-ramps that I approached. My lane was to become an exit, so I turned on my left turn signal and began to move into a long opening that existed to my left.
A dark sedan with aged paint and expensive rims, traveling behind the opening in my target lane, suddenly sped up and traveled beside me, stopping my merge, and becoming an obstacle to my escape from the oncoming off-ramp. I slowed to allow the driver to pass, but he slowed with me. I increased my speed to move beyond his front bumper, but he sped up with me. Time ran out, and I was forced to exit the freeway, and then rejoin the traffic by driving straight, after sitting through a stop light, at the top of the ramp, and onto the on-ramp on the other side.
Before my ascent up the exit, the driver of the car that had cut me off leaned into the passenger section of his vehicle so I could see him, flipped me a middle finger, while laughing incessantly.
My exit was by no accident. The vile driver had purposely forced me off the freeway for the sole purpose of ruining my day, or at least ruining that brief moment in time during my day. He endeavored to anger me for the sake of angering me. He was a jerk for the sake of being a jerk.
I chalked the episode up as being a prime example of the cultural rot we are experiencing, where darkness has risen in our society, and because of the crumbling of morals and decency, the people no longer trust each other, and actually go out of their way to be wrong to others.
Now, because of the commuter that ran me off the freeway, I have become even more wary of the drivers out there. I realize that people are not the greatest drivers. As a big rig driver I have always driven defensively, anticipating the bad moves by the other vehicles on the road. A joke with friends goes like this, "If you think there are a lot of bad drivers on the road, try getting a commercial driver's license. They come out of the woodworks, doing the opposite of what they should do when around a big rig."
As the days darken, and morality turns to pluralism, they are no longer a detriment because of their ignorance, or stupidity. Now, the drivers act in ways driven by anger, and a purposeful effort to be a hindrance to other drivers, and especially the truckers.
My distrust deepens.
Distrust deepens nationwide. Worldwide.
People feel in their gut something is wrong, but the scales over their eyes refuse to allow them to see.
And as the darkness spreads, many have ceased to trust in themselves, and have handed the reins over to government, and a ruling elite that does not care about the people, for their cares lie in the promise of power, prestige, and confirming their theory that they are among the wisest, and it is their place in history to rule over, and socially engineer, society.
Aerosmith may have had it right in the opening lines of their song, "Livin' on the Edge". . .
There's something wrong with the world today
I don't know what it is
Something's wrong with our eyes
We're seeing things in a different way
And God knows it ain't his
It sure ain't no surprise. . .
According to the Associated Press, Americans don't trust each other anymore. Trust in the other fellow has been quietly draining away. The AP says only one-third of Americans say most people can be trusted. Half felt that way in 1972, when the General Social Survey first asked the question.
Forty years later, a record high of nearly two-thirds say "you can't be too careful" in dealing with people.
Americans are suspicious of each other in everyday encounters. Less than one-third expressed a lot of trust in clerks who swipe their credit cards, drivers on the road, or people they meet when traveling.
"Social trust" brings good things, but in a society where social trust has vanished, it is more difficult to compromise, or make a deal. Distrust encourages corruption, diverting energy to counting change, drawing up 100-page legal contracts and building gated communities. When we don't trust each other, we become less civil. And when we are less civil, dictators take control, promising peace and safety.
Experts say that aside from another world war to unite everyone to a common cause, they have no recommendation for a cure.
My dad used to tell me that locks only keep the honest people out.
Perhaps.
Nonetheless, the Associated Press in their article say that "There's no single explanation for Americans' loss of trust."
Then, the writer touches on the truth. Maybe we can call it a "random act of journalism."
"It's possible that people today are indeed less deserving of trust than Americans in the past, perhaps because of a decline in moral values."
Then, the writer touches on the truth. Maybe we can call it a "random act of journalism."
"It's possible that people today are indeed less deserving of trust than Americans in the past, perhaps because of a decline in moral values."
Perhaps because of the decline in moral values?
Perhaps?
A virtuous people are necessary for a free society to remain stable.
A virtuous people are necessary for a free society to remain stable.
John Adams said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Benjamin Franklin said, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."
Samuel Adams said, "The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy the gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people; then shall we both deserve and enjoy it."
George Washington said in his Farewell Address, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. . . . Let is simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?"
Without a virtuous people the society will decay, and with a compromised culture, tyranny will takes its place in the position of power.
At a Dallas High School, a motivational speaker using moral and Christian principles as the basis of his talk, was rejected by the audience. They considered him sexist because he defined roles between the sexes in his speech. Some called it "anti-girl". The same speech would have been received differently only a decade or two ago. Shortly after World War II the talk would have been received warmly (minus the references to sex).
One parent, an ordained minister (the article was quick to point out), said that Jason Lookadoo's discussion was "...highly problematic and needs to be investigated." She added that his message was so gender-biased it also made her extremely concerned for the LGBT kids in the audience who are, as she points out, "statistically more vulnerable to depression and suicide."
Gays represent 2% of the population, and is a lifestyle that has taken hostage the other 98% in order to force society to label their behavior as normal and acceptable. . . and it looks like they've been making a lot of headway based on the comments by the minister in the last paragraph.
Reality is that despite the claims made by those that cling to secularism, humanism, the homosexuals behavior, and the progressives of the liberal left, there is a difference between the sexes. We are individuals, and in order to turn everything around we need to abandon the agendas that have formed an alliance with liberal left forces, and return to our individuality, and moral standards.
I am not talking theocracy, because even a totalitarian system based on religion can be dangerous. Islam is a prime example of that. I am talking about a culture that remembers its roots, and abides by the laws and morals that served as the foundation of that society.
The degradation of our moral standards is by design. We refuse to recognize what is going on, but from their point of view, we are at war. The homosexual agenda, secularists, humanists, atheists, progressives, and any other leftist ideology, is purposely engineering social conquest, eliminating any and all beliefs that dare oppose them.
An information war has been launched. The weapons? Technology. The ammunition? Propaganda. As New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Roman Catholic Church as pointed out, we are being "outmarketed."
Through the use of the media, the education system, and the entertainment industry, the leftists have waged war on our standards of morality, softening their target for attack, preparing us for tyranny. As a society we have become decadent, and as a result, social distrust has poisoned our culture. We have ceased being a virtuous people, and until we change that direction, our liberty is directly at risk.
The madness created by progressive policies has convinced people to abandon their individuality, their willingness to be self-reliant, and any sense of personal responsibility. The addiction to an amoral culture, combined with the addiction to dependency on the government, has pushed people to insanity that even the experts are unwilling to admit. In Greece, for example, as the country runs out of money and must reduce spending through austerity plans, in order to still qualify for entitlement program money, half of the new cases of HIV in that country were self-inflicted.
Think about that. The people are so dependent on government, and so convinced that they cannot fend for themselves after generations of government programs, that they are willing to sentence themselves to a miserable death in order to keep their "benefits."
Our only hope is revival, and revival will not happen unless the hearts and minds of the people change.
-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
In God We Trust, maybe, but not each other - My Way News
The Social Conquest of Earth - The Humanist
Herbert London, America's Secular Challenge: The Rise of a New National Religion, Encounter Books (2008)
Dolan: Catholics 'outmarketed' on gay marriage - Yahoo! News
Half of new HIV cases in Greece self-inflicted for benefits - The Daily Caller
Greeks self-inject HIV to claim benefits - Al Jazeera English
No comments:
Post a Comment