Current mood:
pessimistic
pessimisticWhen did our society become so white trash and ghetto? I was watching Maury again (a bad habit I know), and these people think it's perfectly ok to act the way they do. There used to be something about pride in yourself.
I don't want to say, "Well back in the day everything was perfect." No there was bad parenting back then too. But I think back to the movie "Fight Club." We are a nation of men being raised by women. I don't want to come off as right-wing conservative, because I am quite liberal. I'm actually ok with gay couples adopting because at least they have a stable family unit. But I feel that we are becoming a nation of dumbasses who have zero morals.
My Girlfriend Roxy (not her real name) was saying how students in her classes had tattoos. I couldn't believe it because none of them where 18. She said their parents ok'ed it, and let them get a tattoo. I remember my Dad telling me in no uncertain terms that I would never get a tattoo or an ear-ring under his house. I didn't, and still to this day do not have either.
I also feel sorry for the young men who want to raise a family right, but can't do to the way corporations have shipped all our jobs overseas the last thirty-five years. People offen wonder why Los Angeles is as bad as it is. Well, I have been to L.A. and will gladly give my opinion why. L.A. (Long Beach) is right on the ocean. I have actually picked up a trailer from the docks at Long Beach. There used to be a lot of factories in L.A. Goods were made and then shipped all over the world. Even if young wild boys dropped out of high school, by the time they hit 20 they would get their act together, and go work at a plant. A lot of automotive parts were made there. In fact, the Firestone tire plant employed a ton of workers. Well, in the 70's a lot of plants left, and went overseas. Prices actually went up with the insane inflation of the 70's, and people were out of work.
Now these young (mostly black and latino) men had nowhere to work. It surpised me that in a few documentarys that I have seen that a lot of drug dealers work at McDonalds part-time, and then work as a drug dealer part-time. They do this not to go "big pimpin." They do it just to feed their families, and try to have a place to live.
And I hate what George W. Bush has done to eduation. We are basically teaching all of our students to be middle management. Just English and Math, no outside the box thinking. No real life skills.
I think about how where we lived on 15th street and how it suddenly became the ghetto. How did that happen? People used to have pride about where they lived. I remember Dad buying three oak trees to make the property look good. Our soil was terrible on 15th street so it was hard get to plants and trees to grow. However, we made a real effort to get those three oak trees to take root. They didn't grow fast because for the first five years they had to grow really long roots so they get enough water and nutrients. But after that they started to take off. We painted the house, and picked up all the garbage that the litterbugs threw on the side of the road.
When we left the house on 15th Street the new owner did the following. 1. Ripped out $3000 of oak cabinets and sold them to someone or something. 2. Illegally cut down all the oak trees. (He did get fined for that. $1000 per tree.) 3. Paint the house an ugly as color. 4. Knock out the support beams and outside garage. (The house is technically unstable because of this.) This brings me back to why? Why make your house so ghetto?
When talking about great theater, they often refer to the 70's as the golden age of cinema. Good stories, great plots, amazingly original characters. Now it just seems that it's all curse words and explosions. I think of what Megan Fox said about "Transformers." She said, "No one sees Transformers for the acting." I think Hollywood has finally run out of original ideas. Think of all the comic books movies they have now. The plots for the Spiderman movies came from books written in the 70's and 80's. Where is this generations, "To Kill a Mockingbird?"
A big question that has faced government is, "How far should government intrude into our daily lives?" Some people say, "Well, there should be a law against that." "That" meaning whatever they were complaining about. It goes back to common sense and common decency. We didn't need to govern it, because parents instilled it in their children. Why do we have DCF (Dept. of Children and Families?) Because parents mistreat their children. Why do we have J.D. Centers? Because parents are not raising their children right.
My deceased friend Mel was a Tampa Police Officer back in the 50's and 60's. Yes, the "seperate but equal" policy was the policy of the South. He once caught some black kids stealing candy. He didn't take them to a Detention Center. No, he took them to their Mother, told her what they did, and gave her his belt. She then whooped them to within an inch of their lives. She then gave Mel permission to whoop them if he ever caught them stealing candy again. She would then in turn whip them after Mel got through with them.
I liked that justice was quick and swift. I myself had trouble with the law. I ended up waiting 6 months just to get a notice to appear in court, and then another 6 months before it was resolved. I then had to do 5 months of seeing a probation officer. I was supposed to go for 9 months, and it could have gone to 18 months. So lets get this right. 2 and a half years for a resolution to what was a misdermeanor. Yeah. I remember my Grandpa Rex saying that if two guys had a problem, and wanted to fight it out there was no problem with that. There was no calling the police. No one pulled guns or knives, and all fights were one on one. Once a fight was over with it was over.
Every young man was taught the rules of fighting by their father. That's the way it was. Fights were one on one. There was none of this gang stuff. You fought to fight, not to put someone in the hospital. When it was over, it was over. When I went to my first (mostly black, intercity) school I saw how those rules went out the window. I never saw a black male fight anyone one on one. They didn't have father's to teach them the rules.
Heck, I saw something in a documentary that really made me think. It was a documentary about life in prison. There was an inmate who was in for life, and said the new inmates that came in were just plain crazy. He said that he had killed a man, and he regreted it everyday. He said the new inmates came in and they wanted to kill people on the streets, they wanted to kill people on the inside of prison. They didn't care if it was other inmates, or guards. They just wanted to kill. That's the kind of kids that are coming up in this society.
As Americans it worries me about this attitude about killing. We have averaged a major war every 20 years since the creation of our country. I think that has taken it's toll on this country in the form of taxes. I didn't know it until lately, but most Americans pay 40% of their income in taxes. It's disgused very cleaverly, but we do. We are still paying for things that happened a long time ago. The Viet Nam war was 20 years long. That got expensive. Reagan then built our Military forces up despite us not fighting an official war. We bankrupted the Soviet Union, but at what cost? We had 10 times more planes than pilots who could fly them. We had more tanks than we could ever really use. We had a billion dollar Star Wars space laser system that didn't even exist. We didn't run up too much costs in the first Gulf War since it was so short. But now we are fighting a war on two fronts, something every 2nd Lt. to General will tell you not to do. We now have more private contractors than U.S. Military personal in Afghanistan. Private contractors have driven the cost of this war through the roof. Here's an example. You can hire and pay a U.S. Army soldier to drive a truck for $30,000 a year. (That includes hazardous duty pay.) Instead they will hire a private contrator $360,000 a year to drive that same truck. That makes no sense.
Today I saw an interesting discussion on the local news. A local rapper made wrote a song where he named police officers by name, and said that he was going to kill them. Now, I am for 1st Amendment rights, and I even own Ice-T's heavy metal record with Body Count called "Cop Killer" with the song "Cop Killer." However, to make a rap song, name officers, and then say you are going to kill them just crosses the line. The one lawyer on there was saying that is was a simple 1st amendment open and shut case. You know, that's why people hate lawyers. The rapper is in jail for 2 other charges, but he got a few more months for threatening the policemen.
I worry about this country. We are in more debt than ever. Both parties have become puppets of lobbyists, and run the debts up for every pork barrel project they can. Even my beloved Southern Democrats are nothing like they used to be. They just don't exist anymore. Jobs keep moving to China, prices go up, and our dollar is deflated. This is how a country goes bankrupt. I think back to Rome, and how it stood for a long time. However, even Rome burned and died.
I hate to be pessimistic, but I think the end is coming for the United States. Or at least the United Stated we used to know. In 20 years we won't be able to even pay the interest on the national debt. And what then? Will we have to start selling off states to pay back what we owe? I don't look forward to the future
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