Roger Landry
WTPN

I WAS WRONG – I have sailed through life, as so many of us have done, feeling that my decisions and the path that I have steered was a sound one. I reflect on all of the things that I have accomplished, and all the things I have failed to, but the more I thought and reminisced, the more my thoughts drifted to the state of this union and I had an Epiphany: I WAS WRONG !!! Now before you say “Oh no Roger, not you!” LOL , let me give you some details to help bring this essay along. Please bare with me!

When I was young I used to read stories about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and their fanatical ideals of Communism, and how they spread their ideology by aggression like a dark cancer, attacking the forces of good and light throughout the world. For every regional skirmish they started, we would jump in and counter their aggression. Around the world, we were loved and admired! I knew that wherever there was evil in the world we, the United States Of America, would be there in all our righteous splendor to do battle with these fiends, defend the innocent, and bring freedom and liberty to all! Today, I look at the world without those rose colored glasses, and what I see is over a million Iraqis dead or maimed for life, and how many in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Libya…etc…? A sizable and growing portion of the world is staring back at us, their eyes burning with the same hatred and contempt that I used to feel when I was young. I WAS WRONG!

I can remember when I was in high school, trying for the first time to figure out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and thinking this is America! We are the richest and most productive society on the face of this planet. We have the money, resources, ingenuity, production capacity, and the imagination to reach for the lofty goals that many other countries can only dream of! We sent men to the bottom of the ocean, to the moon, and scientifically explored every planet in the solar system! We would always be rich, resourceful, and extremely productive! Today, I see our manned space program all but shut down and forgotten, American astronauts ride into space on Russian rockets, our mortal enemy and biggest competitor on the world stage only scant years ago. I see a huge influx of foreign students yearning to educate themselves and return to their countries, because opportunities are growing more scarce by the day here; but worst of all, I can drive by any large city and see one factory after another, closed down and locked up because we, as a nation, are no longer productive enough in many areas to compete on a global scale. This ability to produce had built a middle class so powerful in this country it was the envy of all the world, and it is evaporating before our eyes. I WAS WRONG!

I can remember, as a youngster, reading Fortune magazine’s stories about the abundance of American dollars flooding the world. Rich Americans and American companies traveling the globe, buying land, foreign corporations, Hell, damn near whole countries! The dollar was the only true global currency, and was accepted almost anywhere. A fist full of dollars bought more than a bushel basket of rubles! We, as a country, were rich, generous, and philanthropic. Our ability to innovate, manufacture, and distribute on a global scale was unchallenged! Hell, we would always be the eight hundred pound gorilla on the block, and we used that to our advantage. Today, I see less and less American companies do any real manufacturing in the states, but instead buy components from China, Japan, or third world countries, and only do final assembly in the US. The dollar is worth about half of what it was a scant few years ago. Our national credit rating (which, as the worlds biggest debtor nation, is critical to us) is on a slide southward that will not stop unless we get our collective heads out of our asses real soon. Worst of all is China, the one country which presents the biggest threat to our productivity, national wealth, and (some would say) soon our military, is also our biggest creditor, holding well over one trillion American dollars. I WAS WRONG!

I used to think (and to an extent still do) that we had the best form of governance on this planet, a Republic that would easily stand the test of time! A real example to the rest of the world in how WE THE PEOPLE should be governed. We shared freedoms that most others only dream of, and we certainly did thrive! Today, I search for the root of our problems and find it is ourselves; more to the point, our elected leaders! We operate on two cycles in politics in this country, and they are “election time” and “preparing for election time”. For instance, a four year presidential cycle (and this applies to all elected offices to some degree) now works out like this: One and a half years preparing for an election, and two and a half years trying not to piss anyone off so you can get re-elected. This hardly leaves time to solve the national problems that have been constantly kicked down the road, because if you have to make a tough decision, your chances for re-election may suffer. What this does is invite constant finger pointing, rampant cronyism, and a government that accomplishes very little, and thus becomes ineffective! We are giving up more of our freedom and rights on a daily basis due to apathy and complacency, and our leadership is stagnant and totally ineffective. I WAS WRONG

So I started to look for solutions, and (try as I may) have only been able to come up with one I have any level of confidence in at all. We the people must unify our voices because although one voice may speak, many unified voices can roar and dammit it is time to ROAR … BECAUSE I AM SICK AND TIRED OF BEING WRONG !!!

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