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I've
got my fill--at least for the moment--of what's not working.
What I would prefer to concentrate on now is what we can do
about it. Surprisingly, while I
do have some suggestions, I don’t have any easy answers.
The
older I get, the more it seems like most of us never really
grew up. Not really. We all still seem to be
immature adolescent children underneath our wrinkles, chubby
bodies and thinning hair. I mean there's perhaps 200,000
people working for the NSA, FBI etc. and each one of them took
an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Did
the powers that be really think that none of them would ever
break their silence after discovering that what they were
being asked to do is specifically prohibited by the
Constitution and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights?
And
then when the powers that be get caught, they make excuses,
then blame and conspire to take vengeance on the truth
tellers. These powers that be...too embarrassed to simply admit they just got caught with
their hand in the cookie jar, too afraid to face the music and
tell the truth about what they've done. How immature is
that? And these people are still pretending they're
grown up adults even though most everyone else can see through
their flimsy facade. Kind of foolish when you consider
that what's at stake is freedom itself, the rule of law, and
the well-being of every person, every nation on the planet.
I
used to think that any effort one makes to improve things is
better than nothing, but now I even question that. If we
protest in the streets we will be facing people just like
ourselves in a way. The police and security agents are
really just our neighbors who have jobs and bills to pay like
the rest of us. And apparently, like a lot of us, when
given the choice between retaining their job... or their honor
and dignity...they lean more heavily towards keeping their job. There
are exceptions, of course.
The
police and agents agreed to take orders from superiors who
were supposed to have good common sense, along with some courage, honor, and wisdom, but who
turned out to be particularly challenged and clueless in those
four areas. Maybe that’s understandable, when you
consider how much risk and how much courage it took for Edward
Snowden, and others before him, to make their decisions. One
certainly has to admire the maturity and strength of character
it took for them to finally choose the difficult but honorable
path. Snowden provided a great service to every person
on the planet, to our posterity, and indeed, to the very cause
of freedom itself. We can only hope his courage and possible
sacrifice wasn't in vain.
The
real culprits, if there are any real culprits, never have to
enter the fray so to speak in pursuing their goals. When
there’s push back from angry and betrayed citizens, the
culprits hire “goons” with guns, tear gas and batons to do
the dirty work for them. So what I’d like to know is
how do we get the “goons” to lay down their weapons when
apparently there’s a reserve of misdirected, under-educated
“goons” ready to take them up again if they do? Not
an easy problem to solve.
Amazingly,
I find very little discussion about real solutions... and by
solutions I don't mean how
things ought to be… once things have changed. I
mean how do we get to a place where there’s a real chance of
putting those kinds of changes into effect… without too much
bloodshed, that is? Maybe what I'm asking is what
everyone's been trying to figure out. We're all
doing our best, I suppose, but it looks to me like the
situation is just getting worse in spite of our efforts.
More
and more, the world is looking like an insane asylum run by
the inmates... or at best, people looking like but only
pretending to be mature adults. So where are all
the grown-ups? That's what I'd like to know. We
sure could use some right about now.
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