I've About Had It!

[jayinsat]

I am so sick and tired of all the constant fighting in this country. I honestly feel like a child watching his parents just before divorce. This nation is most certainly at its breaking point and I really can't see a great future ahead. Jesus said "A kingdom divided itself cannot stand." That describes us and, in our current state, we will not stand. The media, this administration (and past on both sides of the aisle) has an agenda. The plan is to divide and conquer and, so far, they are doing a wonderful job.

1 Timothy 1:12: "For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day."

I'd lose all hope were it not for God's promises.

[JALLEN]

I have no idea how old you are, but I'm about the oldest baby-boomer it is possible to be, born at the very end of WWII.

As hard as it is to imagine, this is not particularly unusual, in fact, dissent and dissension is more the norm than the exception. I remember the witchhunts and cold war, the very early stages of the civil rights controversies, the appearance of beatniks who transmogrified into hippies, the anti-war doper dirtballs who made common cause with the Communists to shanghai the old Democrat Party in the McGovern-McCarthy (Gene, not Joe) Era, the Carter era malaise and all that has happened since.

Politics, especially at the national level, has always been hardball. I still laugh about the t-shirt that Bill Clinton almost choked to death when he saw it the first time he returned to Little Rock as President.... featuring a picture of his cat, Socks, saying "The mice in Little Rock ain't nothing compared to the rats in DC!"

Before that, the period of WWII, dissent and so forth was buried beneath the thin veneer of patriotism. Everyone pretty much either joined in to defeat the common foes or kept their mouths shut. Before the war, Roosevelt has plenty of opponents, even within his own party, like Veep John Nance Garner who was convinced FDR was spending the country into ruin and opposed the court-packing scheme enthusiastically, setting off a schism that ended his career. Some may recall that Garner was set to be the nominee of the Democrat Party in 1940 but his efforts were undermined by a Democrat Congressman in the Texas delegation named Lyndon Johnson who ratted him out to FDR on every occasion.

Long story short, this has gone on since the earliest days of the Republic. Young people raising Cain about whatever they are upset about, older types complaining that things were better 30, 40, 50 years ago, as the French say, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!"

[anygunanywhere]

I have no idea how old you are, but I'm about the oldest baby-boomer it is possible to be, born at the very end of WWII.

As hard as it is to imagine, this is not particularly unusual, in fact, dissent and dissension is more the norm than the exception. I remember the witchhunts and cold war, the very early stages of the civil rights controversies, the appearance of beatniks who transmogrified into hippies, the anti-war doper dirtballs who made common cause with the Communists to shanghai the old Democrat Party in the McGovern-McCarthy (Gene, not Joe) Era, the Carter era malaise and all that has happened since.

Politics, especially at the national level, has always been hardball. I still laugh about the t-shirt that Bill Clinton almost choked to death when he saw it the first time he returned to Little Rock as President.... featuring a picture of his cat, Socks, saying "The mice in Little Rock ain't nothing compared to the rats in DC!"

Before that, the period of WWII, dissent and so forth was buried beneath the thin veneer of patriotism. Everyone pretty much either joined in to defeat the common foes or kept their mouths shut. Before the war, Roosevelt has plenty of opponents, even within his own party, like Veep John Nance Garner who was convinced FDR was spending the country into ruin and opposed the court-packing scheme enthusiastically, setting off a schism that ended his career. Some may recall that Garner was set to be the nominee of the Democrat Party in 1940 but his efforts were undermined by a Democrat Congressman in the Texas delegation named Lyndon Johnson who ratted him out to FDR on every occasion.

Long story short, this has gone on since the earliest days of the Republic. Young people raising Cain about whatever they are upset about, older types complaining that things were better 30, 40, 50 years ago, as the French say, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!"

That is one way of looking at it and I see your point.

I think Jayinsat's words are more descriptive of watching the water swirl around the toilet bowl before it gurgles down the sewer. He will have to verify my interpretation.

Anygunanywhere

[J.R.@A&M]

The 24 hr cable news cycle and internet keeps the pot stirred more than in the past, I think. So while the level of social and political conflict may not be different, but I'm certainly more aware of it. So the onus is on me to break that cycle, go outside and play more with the kids.

[A-R]

Jay and jallen, very good thought/analysis from you both. I too am worried by the bitter divide I see, but comforted by the historical similarities.

to you both

[jayinsat]

I think Jayinsat's words are more descriptive of watching the water swirl around the toilet bowl before it gurgles down the sewer. He will have to verify my interpretation.

That's about right Anygun.

jallen, I do appreciate your perspective. It does give me a little more hope to know "this too shall pass".

From the Christocentric perspective, I think America is ripe for a good ol'fasion revival. YMMV

[The Annoyed Man]

I have no idea how old you are, but I'm about the oldest baby-boomer it is possible to be, born at the very end of WWII.

As hard as it is to imagine, this is not particularly unusual, in fact, dissent and dissension is more the norm than the exception. I remember the witchhunts and cold war, the very early stages of the civil rights controversies, the appearance of beatniks who transmogrified into hippies, the anti-war doper dirtballs who made common cause with the Communists to shanghai the old Democrat Party in the McGovern-McCarthy (Gene, not Joe) Era, the Carter era malaise and all that has happened since.

Politics, especially at the national level, has always been hardball. I still laugh about the t-shirt that Bill Clinton almost choked to death when he saw it the first time he returned to Little Rock as President.... featuring a picture of his cat, Socks, saying "The mice in Little Rock ain't nothing compared to the rats in DC!"

Before that, the period of WWII, dissent and so forth was buried beneath the thin veneer of patriotism. Everyone pretty much either joined in to defeat the common foes or kept their mouths shut. Before the war, Roosevelt has plenty of opponents, even within his own party, like Veep John Nance Garner who was convinced FDR was spending the country into ruin and opposed the court-packing scheme enthusiastically, setting off a schism that ended his career. Some may recall that Garner was set to be the nominee of the Democrat Party in 1940 but his efforts were undermined by a Democrat Congressman in the Texas delegation named Lyndon Johnson who ratted him out to FDR on every occasion.

Long story short, this has gone on since the earliest days of the Republic. Young people raising Cain about whatever they are upset about, older types complaining that things were better 30, 40, 50 years ago, as the French say, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!"

That is one way of looking at it and I see your point.

I think Jayinsat's words are more descriptive of watching the water swirl around the toilet bowl before it gurgles down the sewer. He will have to verify my interpretation.

Anygunanywhere

OK, so JALLEN has just verified that he is about 5-6 years older than me. I remember all of those things too, and having parents who were very politically active (sadly for the wrong causes), I became politically aware at an earlier age than many of my peers. I DON'T recall it ever being this bad, and I have a view of things closer to jayinsat's than JALLEN's.

Yes, there have always been fairly significant political tensions, but those tensions were often moderated by a few things which do not exist at all today except among a diminishing number of either older, or religious people who remember and maintain them:

• A shared sense of destiny.
• A shared sense of America's uniqueness as the "shining city on the hill."
• A shared sense of respect for the Constitution. (We might have bickered about what it meant, but we didn't write it off as an outdated document written by a bunch of dead white guys.)
• A shared sense of reverence for an Almighty.....however one might define that.....to whom we puny humans are accountable.
• A shared sense that, while politics come and go, there is a moral core which transcends ideology and fashion, and that a sure sign of maturity and wisdom in the individual is when that person makes their own pride and ambition subservient to that morality, instead of in opposition to it.
• A shared sense that we actually can make a difference in the world around us AND STILL protect the liberties of the individual.
• A shared sense that risk is preferable to loss of liberty.
• A sense of shame for violating standards of common decency.
• A sense of shame for being on the dole if it is at all possible to avoid it; and shame for anyone who is too comfortable in that role.

Those are just a few of the things I can think of off the top of my head. Yes, it is true that there have been times when none of these things were reality for certain groups of people. Black slaves certainly had no cause to believe that a just society was even possible.........and yet, many risked it all to escape and restart their lives somewhere else where they could be free. Even so, many people of color fled the racism they knew in the south to move to the progressive north, only to face an institutionalized racism they didn't know. Today, you can't get a slave to progressive nanny statism to voluntarily leave the plantation......regardless of his or her color.......because they are there voluntarily and without shame.

The common virtues are no longer taught in our schools, because the culture no longer regards them as virtues. In the 1950s and 1960s, any public school educator who used a banana to show girls how to put a condom on their sexual partner would have been imprisoned for it. Not today. Our schools are so busy prepping kids for college math, that they don't teach kids how to balance their checkbooks.

The problems we have today are not just ideological. They are cultural. Cultures have always been subject to change throughout human history, but those changes are small and incremental, and keep the culture stable over long periods of time. Name a culture, and I'll show you a culture that has undergone change over the arc of its existence. Even so, OUR culture, western culture has undergone radical change in mere decades. Why do people feel like they can't leave their front door unlocked anymore? It's because theft has become no big deal......except to the victim of it. To society at large, they seek to "understand" the thief, and to create a world in which there is no more theft. You might as well chop their hands off at birth. Theft predates the 10 Commandments. It is as old as mankind. But when there are no consequences for theft, then theft increases. Now people have to lock their doors. They don't look out for one another anymore. I'm not talking about paying for one another's bad habits out of the public treasury. I'm talking about disciplining one another's children. I'm talking about accepting the mantle of adulthood, and not just the title, but the role as well. I'm talking about whenever an adult has to choose between being their kid's parent or being their kid's best friend, they choose parent now.........so that later they can be their kid's best friend.....instead of choosing best friend now, and then being bewildered why their kid won't accept being parented later.

Until lately, western culture, particularly our version of it, has been the greatest guarantor of individual liberty in human history. Why? Because we raised people who knew how to be free while at the same time being willing to accept the responsibilities that go with freedom.

JALLEN, our generation.....yours and mine.....is responsible for dismantling the engine that produces free citizens. FDR and LBJ were passing political aberrations. They did their damage, but that damage was remediable given a stable culture still possessed of the values of Classical Liberalism......which we know today as libertarian leaning conservatism. Cultures breed political structures....not the othe way around. The culture at large no longer possesses those values, thus the political structures are changing.

Those changes will be permanent until we ACT to change them. But with the culture changing as rapidly as it has, and for the worse, any changes the culture breeds in politics will be for the worse.

[G26ster]

I take no comfort in the similarities, as to me the similarities aren't very similar at all. I'm pre-baby boom. I "boomed" in early 1942. I have lived and worked through all the nation's history since, and I have never seen such a divide before. As for a tipping point, I believe we have gone beyond that point, and every day come closer to a nation the founders never intended. The scales are tipped to a point where the ill or misinformed majority want a nanny state. You could replace every politician in Washington, and the voting public would elect like minded bozos to replace them. The individual has been replaced by the collective. I see a dim future for the America I knew ahead.

[chasfm11]

I am so sick and tired of all the constant fighting in this country. I honestly feel like a child watching his parents just before divorce. This nation is most certainly at its breaking point and I really can't see a great future ahead. Jesus said "A kingdom divided itself cannot stand." That describes us and, in our current state, we will not stand. The media, this administration (and past on both sides of the aisle) has an agenda. The plan is to divide and conquer and, so far, they are doing a wonderful job.

1 Timothy 1:12: "For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day."

I'd lose all hope were it not for God's promises.

I'm a simple man. I have a few simple yes or no questions:

1. Do you believe that the US is heading in the right directions? I use the plural because, while I'm simple, the world we live in is not.

2. If you disagree with any of those directions, are you willing to act to change it?

3. If you act to change it, whether through speech or political actions, do you expect your actions to go unchallenged by those responsible for the current directions? Isn't that conflict?

I believe that some of the reason for our current dilemma is sins of omission rather than sins of commission on the part of the population. Too many of us, me included, bought into the false promises that were made. "If you like your current healthcare plan, you can keep it." is only one of the more recent and blatant examples. As a project manager, I quickly learned the wisdom of the statement "expect what you inspect." When I wasn't watching, I got myself into trouble, even in areas that seemed innocuous at the time.

What I've learned is that all politicians bear watching all the time. It is tiring but necessary. If more people took the time to watch and then report directly to our politicians on what they don't like about what they see, our country would be better off. I believe that much of the conflict that we have is manufactured by the politicians so that we don't have time to watch them.

[JALLEN]

That is one way of looking at it and I see your point.

I think Jayinsat's words are more descriptive of watching the water swirl around the toilet bowl before it gurgles down the sewer. He will have to verify my interpretation.

Anygunanywhere

I remember that my granddad, born in 1900 and worked at Hughes Tool Co from 1919 to about 1954 or so, used to say the country was going down the drain. Of course, he blamed it all on Elvis. I can't help but think his parents said the same thing about my mother's younger years, blaming all the frivolity on Benny Goodman, or Frank Sinatra, or Mae West or someone. I also recall hearing that there were a great many homes in America in the '30's where one was not allowed to use the "R" word. (Roosevelt!)

[jayinsat]

I am so sick and tired of all the constant fighting in this country. I honestly feel like a child watching his parents just before divorce. This nation is most certainly at its breaking point and I really can't see a great future ahead. Jesus said "A kingdom divided itself cannot stand." That describes us and, in our current state, we will not stand. The media, this administration (and past on both sides of the aisle) has an agenda. The plan is to divide and conquer and, so far, they are doing a wonderful job.

1 Timothy 1:12: "For this reason I also suffer these things; nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day."

I'd lose all hope were it not for God's promises.

I'm a simple man. I have a few simple yes or no questions:

1. Do you believe that the US is heading in the right directions? I use the plural because, while I'm simple, the world we live in is not.

2. If you disagree with any of those directions, are you willing to act to change it?

3. If you act to change it, whether through speech or political actions, do you expect your actions to go unchallenged by those responsible for the current directions? Isn't that conflict?

I believe that some of the reason for our current dilemma is sins of omission rather than sins of commission on the part of the population. Too many of us, me included, bought into the false promises that were made. "If you like your current healthcare plan, you can keep it." is only one of the more recent and blatant examples. As a project manager, I quickly learned the wisdom of the statement "expect what you inspect." When I wasn't watching, I got myself into trouble, even in areas that seemed innocuous at the time.

What I've learned is that all politicians bear watching all the time. It is tiring but necessary. If more people took the time to watch and then report directly to our politicians on what they don't like about what they see, our country would be better off. I believe that much of the conflict that we have is manufactured by the politicians so that we don't have time to watch them.

Conflict and political division is not the problem. That will always be. Like TAM said, there is no real common foundation in this nation. That is the danger that I believe makes this different than any other. I believe change happens one heart at a time and that is how I approach it but the level of vitriol makes it ever-increasingly difficult to have a civil conversation with anyone about anything. There is NO common ground between the differing factions. Heck, even here in a forum where we passionately share interest, many conversations devolve into name-calling brawl.

[JALLEN]

Conflict and political division is not the problem. That will always be. Like TAM said, there is no real common foundation in this nation. That is the danger that I believe makes this different than any other. I believe change happens one heart at a time and that is how I approach it but the level of vitriol makes it ever-increasingly difficult to have a civil conversation with anyone about anything. There is NO common ground between the differing factions. Heck, even here in a forum where we passionately share interest, many conversations devolve into name-calling brawl.

Nobody ever claimed that the melting pot wouldn't be a constantly boiling bubbling caldron.

I have started to come to the view that the old melting pot is a silly notion. Why should all sorts of different folks, different in culture, religion, language, morals, etc all melt into one common culture? What is the advantage in that? It seems to me it only provokes constant tension, some violence, and promotes intolerance.

[anygunanywhere]

The melting pot is not so silly.

Early on immigrants wanted to be Americans and assimmilate into our country. If you look here in Texas there are pronounced remnants of many cultures - German, Czech, Mexican, and many others. Even though they treasured their heritage and celebrated their ancestry they were still Americans and all worked to achieve "The American Dream".

Today the dream is an old tired cliche. No one coming here wants to share in any type of common quest for the freedom and opportunity that used to be the hallmark of this nation.

Anygunanywhere

[cb1000rider]

I have started to come to the view that the old melting pot is a silly notion. Why should all sorts of different folks, different in culture, religion, language, morals, etc all melt into one common culture? What is the advantage in that? It seems to me it only provokes constant tension, some violence, and promotes intolerance.

There will always be culture and sub-culture. Exact cultural uniformity is impossible.

If the melting pot won't work, describe the alternative to us... Are we talking about one culture, religion, language, and a single nation?

[TexasCajun]

A couple of weeks ago, either the priest at my church or the preacher at my wife's church elaborated on the idea that in order to achieve freedom you first must realize that you've been enslaved. Since the government is becoming expert in providing what the 47% deem necessary and entitled to, it's going to be a long time before that realization creeps in. The only way that I can see that process accelerated is if we begin to enact laws that remove the rights of those that are unwilling to contribute to furthering our society. Somehow I don't see that as a real possibility. But at the same time, I don't see where the values and virtues of our forefathers can compete with the handouts and general lack of morality. More likely than not, we'll continue to spiral downward until a complete collapse is inevitable.