The Unpleasant Season

We have to acknowledge that our country is going through a difficult time of transition.  I have heard people say that America is dying.  That may be going a bit too far.  It isn't clear what it is doing, though.  We live in a time where we are well armed, if not overly well armed, and poorly educated.  That is never a good combination.

This isn't to say that there isn't anything good to see.  There is.  There are plenty of avenues of progress being made, but that doesn't capture the news.  That doesn't keep the pundits talking.  What does is a love for decay, scandal, and basic unpleasantness.  As such, what we begin to believe is that the time in which we live is not good.

And there may be some truth to that.

We live in a time of lawyers, loopholes, and increasing leverage from corporations.  Laws are written and re-written in an attempt to close loopholes on some and open them for others.  The discrepancy between the poor and the wealthy grows at staggering rates and the middle class falls into limbo as common ground slowly gets mined away beneath them.

We live in a time in which the two party system holds the government captive not through legal battles, but because it appears that to be a part of one party is to resolutely swear to hate and refuse to even consider dealing with the opposing party.  

And then comes religion.  It is a time when to be a part of a particular political party implies a particular religious stance.  Some even claim that to be a true patriot, one has to be a rabid Christian fundamentalist that refuses to acknowledge that the climate is changing, the weather patterns are shifting, and that science does bring advancement to the world.  It seems that these kinds of political views do not look to the future, but seek to usher in a return to the late 18th century.

Of course these kinds of politicians call the United States a Christian nation.  This is a fallacy.  It has never been a Christian nation.  It has been greatly influenced by Christians, but when we look back at the Founding Fathers and Mothers of our country, we find that they weren't what we might think of as Christian.  They were Deists, rationalists, and a wide variety of theists.  They were not fundamentalists.

But that doesn't matter to those who have only rhetoric to offer.  And guns, I suppose.  They have that.  Which is troubling.

There is some kind of change taking place, and one might think of it in terms of the human body out in the cold.  The extremities start to lose their feeling first as all resources are moved towards the "vital" organs.  Eventually, though, those begin to shut down because the extremities have stopped being able to move or work.  Heart beat slows, consciousness slips away.

It makes you wonder.