HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
I wish it were so... honest. Fact is Christmas is a difficult time for many people. Quite possibly the expectations... but it's really an individual experience, and not one I can sum up for everyone.
I will step out on a limb here and suggest this isn't your average Christmas. I will suggest, many people are coming face to face with both joy and stark reality.
I know of several people who are facing the latter. Despite all the optimistic predictions for the American Middle Class, nothing realistic has happened to improve our current situation. Many people are unemployed, many are either young and entering the work-force for the first time, many are older, like myself, with the stark reality that our future is in doubt. Most predictions don't foresee a recovery until 2020... that's way past the time-frame for people my age to find the final career to complete their end of life ambitions.
Musical Chairs - Where were you when the SHTF???
I was 7 years at my current job actively pursuing a new job... it all fell through.Meaning, I'm lucky to have the job I do have. How do i feel? Not good!!!
The BOOMERS have hit a brick wall...
Rite of Passage... things during the 1970's were pretty well established. Sure, we had Water-Gate, we had congressional hearings on the Viet Nam War and the scandal it represented. We had gas shortages, we had confusion with regards to illegal drug use, courtesy of the 1960's Hippies... We had Elvis Presley shlocking up to Pres. Nixon asking to be an undercover DEA informant... we had President Nixon, ultimately impeached, disregarding his own intelligence continuing the prohibition of cannabis... WHY! The principal of it. "Fuck the hippies..." was pretty much his attitude.
Then we had President Jimmy Carter... he was in my opinion the best President in years, ever, legalized home brewed beer and wine, and because he felt it was the inalienable right of people to use whatever plant they wished to use, legalized cannabis too. And that should have been the end of the long, disgraceful ban on cannabis, but it wasn't. He was over-ruled on the cannabis.
Then came President Reagan, and his first lady, Nancy Regan... and the "War on Drugs"... "Just Say No..."
The "NO" wasn't directed towards those drugs most dangerous to society - alcohol and tobacco... it was coined in the believe that cannabis was the gateway drug to hard drugs. This despite evidence at the time contradicting such a claim.
What started as Peace and love and acceptance of individual freedom in the 1960's and 1970's, became zero tolerance during the 1980's... became a game of I'm "politically correct, you're not".
It fostered the exact opposite of what began in the 1960's... it fostered intolerance! It enabled fanatics and a strong right wing presence in everyday affairs.
It enabled politics over science, political right over common good. It became the "New World Order", establishing the ideal of a social dichotomy. You're either right or wrong. There is no middle...
John Lennon "had to die"... and for that I am still very sad. He had to die because he represented "Truth, Justice, Liberty for All". He represented a dream... a new life where people aren't discriminated against because they are different, because they don't want to stay on the "merry-go-round" of conformity to the New World Order.
This Christmas... good tidings, but not for all humankind.
Wall-Street has their BIG bonuses back. The Auto Industry is flying high to catch-up. The average person?
SCREWED!!! To put it in perspective. Not very Christmasy, I admit. But it's the truth.
Most people I know we are struggling... and that it won't end anytime soon. That's reality. Doesn't matter that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" has been repealed... that's simply politics that never should have happened to begin with...
You can call me a "Grinch"... but the fact is, for most, this was not a Happy Christmas, nor will it be for many years to come.
I thought things were bad during the 1970's... little did I realize then what BAD was then, is nothing compared to what BAD is now .
Despite that - I do wish all my friends, family and on-line friends the best of times... a Happy New Year!
No comments:
Post a Comment