Monday, October 31, 2011

Apocalypse

What is the apocalypse? Why does the word ring across time? Drumming doom around the globe from our ancient forefather through evolving generations? How is it that such an idea become so entrenched in humankind? It's there….We don't question the fact that it resides in minds and fabrics of all societies.

When ideas hang around a long time usually it's because it is related to an iconic human experience.

The word apocalypse simply means destruction or devastation of something. Something coming to an end. Most common association is the end of the entire world. Noah's flood was both the end as known of his current world and it was starting anew.

Each individual's world has a start and end. Nations have started, flourished, and then passed..History's timeline is a trail of starts and endings. Apocalyptic to all peoples and nations reflected on history's trail. So when this idea emerges as it does every so often the question is when, where, and whose ending will be next?

SO FAR, every predictor has been wrong about the apocalypse as applied to the entire world….However, we see all around us each day things beginning and ending…We accept this is as a common human life experience.

Anxieties are running high in this country and around the globe. We are in wars, uprisings, overthrown governments, failures in social systems, losses of freedoms, and most importantly, for so many loss of hope. Hope has been man's mainstay….. Hope the crops would be better, hope the baby would get well, and hope that we would be safe. Each generation has done what it could to make their hopes come true.

Since humankind was able we have sought safe havens. Good caves where openings could be blocked, walls around our settlements, police on our streets, and standing armies; food supplies, healing hands, with communities for mutual support. Seemed right and the right things to do and we did them. We did all the right things and we did them in spades.

We live longer and prosper at levels unimagined in our grandfathers' days.

We have more of everything. The more we have the more we have to lose. This apocalyptic foreboding finds its way into our daily lives. Now this sense of danger is pervasive within families, communities, and nations. Even when there are no enemies defined, one is sought in the dark boogieman shadows, what is happening down the street, or the chaos across the world. As this anxiety continues to rise and reaches into the hearts and minds, hope begins to lose it footing first among people who are most impacted. The unemployed, the uneducated, the educated unemployed, the under employed and to a different extent everyone else who whisper daily, "Yet by the grace of God…".

Apocalypse describes impending doom and sense is what has pulled us together in the Tea Party. We feel the threat daily and we believe we have identified the danger, we know how to protect ourselves, we have a plan, we are acting on our plan and come next week, in a private voting booth, in our way as Americans voters will begin to mark an end to an oppressive government and the failed leaders in it. We are the ones we've been waiting for…We will fix our problems and clean our hearth.

The founding fathers created a set of ideas on how a good government should operate but warned of failure should or when the wrong leaders come to power with personal power being their goal. They warned that these men would be given their power through their purchase of votes and of voters wanting something for nothing. Voters who had no moral qualms about using the government to take money and wealth from people who earned it and giving it to them without strings or consequences attached. Providing them with food, medical care, housing for life. Before we read class conflict into this know that it was our compassion, beliefs, and values as a people that supported and encouraged government to create this morass of social programs that has now destroyed three generations of one of our minority citizens groups and is now turning its attention to yet other minority groups. There is yet another group being defined by our government and that is the young, well educated, unemployed being invited into the arms of warm government 'well bless their heart' programs.

If this seduction of our young educated children for this president works this would be a true apocalyptic moment.

Try as we might we have never truly separated church and state. The Ten Commandments can be taken down from our courthouses, prayers can be stopped at sporting events as well as all other events, do whatever else can be thought of but a person's religious beliefs get reflected in all that they do….even politicians. If we start examining the core of our Christian beliefs of one people, God children, brother's keepers, we can understand better how we, through our complicity and good intentions, allowed the nation to become liberal, socialist, progressive, and voted for people, over decades, who hold these values. None of which are bad things in and by themselves. None...

Up until eighty years ago everyone knew they had to take care of themselves and their families. No one questioned that because that was the common sense of it. The uestion might be is the idea of personal responsibility something most citizens want to return to? Before we jump to what would seem like the obvious answer know that the standard of living of the middle class has come about in a big part through government's assistance via the tax code. Do we really want to lose our home mortgage deductions and therefore be fully responsible for buying our home? This question could be reframed in a dozen of different ways covering all of the 'little perks' that helps politicians with their middle class voter's block. (Have you ever thought of yourself as a voting block? Well, they do and they find ways to buy middle class loyalty as well as others.)

Let's look at some of the thinking within the Tea groups around the country. What they want and what they hope can be accomplished in the next election. Here is the wish list:

1. Repeal Obamacare
2. Reduce duplicative purchases of Pentagon supplies
3. Eliminate the Department of Education
4. Privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
5. Reduce discretionary spending to 2008 level
6. Block grant Medicaid
7. End ethanol tax credits
8. Sell needless federal buildings
9. Eliminate the Department of Housing and Urban Development
10. Balance the federal budget

This wish list is what many voters want elected officials to do once they get elected.….IF there was a clear control, after the elections in 2012, over the three branches of government then all ten of these wishes on the 'to dos' list could be melded into one bill, passed by both house, and have the president's signature in one short day. BAM its over…Then what? Hopefully close a bunch of the federal departments thrown into the hopper... OK….That would be very good also….

We are still left with a question mark sitting out there in all its glory... (?) Blinking a 'code' saying we must fill in the blank before we can proceed to the next square….

Given the few ideas of importance 'our home discussion meetings' have come up with over the last few years it seems that, 1) We must be clear on what we want government to do and how we want government to interact with us in our personal and national life….2)To define for ourselves what are our responsibilities as citizens and meet those responsibilities…3)What we want government to do at a national/international level and direct them to do only those things…. You wouldn't think it would take any group such a long time to come to these simple ideas but it did… Why? What is so difficult and frankly old ideas?...Us…It is us and the way we are living fuller and more complex lives. The idea of taking on one more responsibility is simply one more to many. So we say, but not out loud, let the other guy do it…Well, what it comes to, the 'other guy' is the government. We even pay the government to take on more responsibilities that may well be our responsibilities as citizens.

Already the tune is getting familiar….Romney is not as bad as "X". "X" is not as bad as "Y". Familiar thinking? You bet.

A posted comment by a member yesterday: LORD HELP US FIND A LEADER... That comment pretty well sums up where we see we are with these candidates in this election cycle. It is an awful experience to end up voting for someone because you don't think they are as bad as the other one….How many time have we all done this and promised ourselves we would never do it again.

Come January, 2013 the 'change plan' needs to be up and running with everyone on board with a new Speaker of the House, new Speaker of the Senate, new Head of the Senate, and a sparkling new President. What is going to get done will get done in the first ninety or one hundred and twenty days of the new administration. After that time line things will start bogging down…Just the sheer weight of the government will slow itself down…Look back at 1995... With all bases covered, more or less, things ground to a timid crawl after ninety days and the voters who worked hard to elect a conservative congress took long naps. Say what? What got said was that even the most conservative congress, with clearly defined goals, a will to act, will start slowing and the grand mission will start getting muddled after three or four months…AND-that-be-our-history…

Just for the heck of it, why don't we begin to take a good look and see what 'needs' there are in each of our communities. Once we can come up with a few 'needs' then decide these needs are best met by government or by us? (If it's something like streets lights then government for sure but if it's social then it may well be something we should do.) If it's government that is the one that should meet the need then let us push them to do it….and help them with the project and the funding.

Just for fun lets take a moment to look at some of the 'social' ideas that the discussion meetings have come up with…. I will just present one of the ideas.

Homeless: The best guess by the Oxford city fathers is that there are between forty and sixty homeless men and women around town at any given time. People, who for whatever reason, lost jobs, homes, accidents, physical and mental illness, addictions of one kind or another. There are little resources to help them…One group in town focuses of the homeless and the group is always short of money….

We have right at fifty thousand people living in our county. What would happen IF half, twenty five thousand, committed to one dollar a week for 26 weeks into a fund to build a facility to offer shelter... With $650,000.00 you could buy land and build a number of large dormitories…Once built there are state and federal funds to help will all the basic ongoing funding needs…. Then say once a year these same contributors could come back for six to eight weeks for another dollar a week for backup funding.

Would any of the contributors miss a dollar a week? Once completed would these contributors feel like they had accomplished something? Might there be a level of pride in this piece of good work….?

Assuming this would be worth doing could we not then do the same thing in other towns and cities in Mississippi?

Is something like this a social issue, a moral issue, a ethical issue for individuals or is this something that should be a government problem to solve.

Going forward we in the Tea Party along with other must sort out what responsibilities we must shoulder and what are things we want government to see to…

Next Week…November 8th ...We're going to move the House...

'Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero'

Ron
 
docnick37@gmail.com
 
http://theoxfordteaparty.blogspot.com/

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