A Rapidly Accelerating Downward Spiral
Do you sense it?
Do you find your throat tightening suddenly?
Do you unexpectedly starve for air?
The pressure is continuously building, pushing harder down upon the chest. It squelches the spontaneity of words and expression. It makes the mind leap and jump. Thoughts race and the movie goes into fast forward, only to fade and trail off to darkness. Let's just think about something else, right?
That is a safety measure... a relief valve. It stops the preponderance of visions of what could, what might be. But the film does seem to run further each time, allowing glimmers of what we can postulate.
It is becoming an ever growing battle between the 'planning/preparation' lobe and the 'enjoy and live' section. It intrudes upon all "normal" life now. The uncertainty, the questions, the concerns of what is to come.
For some of us, anyway. And that portion of the population seems to be getting larger. People of depth... are watching closely.
But as I walk through the grocery store aisles, I also see so many of the unaware. They chat on their cell phones and stuff their shopping carts with foodstuffs as if it actually grew directly upon the shelves they pick it from. They pull into Citgo and Petrol King stations, filling and handing over cubic wads of cash, with no grasp, concept or cares of who a man named Hugo actually is. They are entertained by "reality" TV, Brittany, Paris and American Idol. They think that cash is an entitlement, "given" by the "government" through the extended credit arm of the ATM system.
In a massive, national emergency, they are the faces of victimhood... the walking dead. They will be first a tragedy, then a liability, then a crazed, rabid, desperate threat... and finally a tragedy again.
It is as it has always been, in many ways, throughout history. Truly, we have never known what the next page would be, but most of us have lived in the same chapter. But perhaps it was because it seemed only logical, probable that a continuation of what once was routine... would be always. But it seems we are turning pages in a new, transitional chapter.
So sad it will be, if we allow the book to end. Imagine the let down a reincarnated soldier would experience. Imagine the reaction, if he was to rise from his grave and take in the view of today. What would this man say? This man, who gave up all his wordly connections... his loves, his passions, his hates... his life... for you and me. For all of us who would inherit the country he died to protect and serve. We are people he never knew, nor did he have to know. He had faith that future America would easily see the fruits of his sacrifices... freedom, liberty, the opportunities to rise or to fall individually.
But he assumed, he just instinctively took for granted, that NO ONE who was so lucky to be an American would ever allow the very premises that this union was founded upon... to unravel.
Many Conservative bloggers are now also reacting to the crunch, the negativity and the gloom. I was quite surprised to witness my own lack of enthusiasm to keep pounding the table, to try to repeatedly alert people to the erosion, the cave-in, the slippery descent... shared by many folks who I have admired and read often. I have to consider whether they have lost hope or if they are perhaps concentrating on their own personal preparedness. Maybe both?
Have we let this situation slip so far that it is irretrievable? Consider the multitude of poor to stupid decisions:
When we can't seem to close our borders, we continue to implement more tax payer provided "services" for people who are here illegally, tuition discounts for their children, free health care for undeserving illegals at real Americans' expense, we have 'leaders' of communities insisting upon creating 'sanctuary cities' where illegality is ordered to be ignored by the police (the authorities whose salaries are paid by 'We, The People')?
When we are so overun with politically correct CRAP that stifles free speech as "unfair political participation" and "hate speech"? PC'ism that precludes public recognition/declaration of the worldwide Islamic threat to everything non-Muslim? Appeasements that include foot baths, prayer areas, and covered face driver's license photos...
The after effects of unbridled credit for the masses, who promptly borrowed on bubble collateral and spent frivolously, investing in nothing solid with a future of growth?
Forcing the American public to repeatedly bail out these failed moves by implementing government rescue after rescue?
Continuing to over-print money to the point of devaluing the currency?
When 'multi-culturalism' is marketed as the only "proper"... to the point of hiding, excluding and humbly apologizing for anything that is deemed too genuinely American?
Assaulting Christian beliefs, upon which this country was declaratively founded, as if they somehow precipitated the lack of morals and values that are now the norm, rather than as they once were... the exception.
When everything that was once "right" is now declared "wrong", when "bad" becomes chic, cool and "good"...
Can anyone who takes quiet pause to consider... deny that this must eventually culminate in a vast reckoning?
Sadness is the day's name when all we have remaining is the imperative need for a button that never existed...
*I wrote this almost exactly one year ago, but never published it. Unfortunately, it dovetails with a disturbingly exact fit now... as was forecast.