Conventional thought suggests that the elders of the tribe
should be treasured for their knowledge and wisdom. With my 75th
birthday arriving this week, I believe I’ve reached the age to be considered
and elder, but I can’t offer any wisdom that isn’t patently obvious for all of
us to see if we read a paper or turn on the TV.
I was three months old when my country plunged into the
first war of my lifetime, and it was a doozy. Millions of people died, and more
millions were physically maimed and mentally scarred, but the result was that
tyranny was held at bay, if not defeated.
For that reason it was generally regarded to be a good war.
A few years later, we…the US of A with the help of the UN…decided
that the world needed a police force and we entered a war in Korea. We stuck
our collective noses into something that was none of our business, and into an
issue that we couldn’t resolve. Once again many millions died or suffered, and
more than a half-century later the Korean problem still isn’t resolved.
You’d think we’d learn, but we still weren’t smart and we
did it again. Well meaning, naïve people, goaded by international profiteers,
decided we could resolve the disagreement in Indochina, even after the French
failed miserably. Millions more died, trillions of dollars were spent, and the
moral fabric of our country began to unravel…and we still didn’t learn anything.
After we left that fetid morass, we went right back to interfering in regional
conflicts. As Forrest Gump said…”Stupid is a stupid does”…and we does it in
spades!
The result is that now we are engaged in another global war,
and to borrow another phrase, we are stuck on stupid. We will never, ever,
defeat a worldwide following of religious zealots. Because of the power we’ve
allowed a bunch of misguided do-gooders who think it’s more important to feel
good about our intentions, we never consider the laws of unintended
consequences before we jump into the middle of family feuds and divine purification.
In an effort to accommodate disparate opinions, we take symbolic
military actions that kill, maim, and empty the treasury, and then let lawyers,
not generals, decide which violent acts are okay and which are not. Anyone with
a lick of common sense can tell you that we have no chance of changing people’s
minds about religious theories about what it takes to guarantee an afterlife. Instead
of concentrating on our own problems, we throw dollars, unsolicited advice, and
unrealistic demands at those who don’t like us, don’t respect us, who are
different than us, and don’t want us nosing into their business.
We are only weeks away from another national election that
will set in motion the next step in unraveling our country. I’ve met very few
who can honestly and enthusiastically declare that they support either major
party, or either presidential candidate. Instead they are against the people
and politics of the opposition.
I have yet to hear any politician or any pundit say that
their party is pledged to follow the Constitution of the United States. Instead
they want to run things their way…and that is where our problems begin and end.
