1930's Redux

More and more those under the age of 30 are joined at the hip to their computers, their smart phones and their pads. It is chronic. Social skills are rapidly declining. More important, a phony sense of life is replacing reality. Folks are living in an alternative universe, an ersatz reality, a cyber life. It is clouding clear thinking, if there is any thinking taking place at all.

The answers to the difficult questions of life are not found in a computer. I am afraid there is a time coming very shortly in which some of us are going to learn some hard lessons. Rapid communication is a good thing. The wealth of information available to all of us is a good thing. But it cannot replace reality and the hard truths that come with. Life’s problems cannot and will not be solved by looking them up on Wikipedia.

Rick Santorum talked about evil in the world. He was poo-pooed. But he was right. There is evil in the world. Hitler was evil. Stalin was evil. Pol Pot was evil. And right now, there is a strain of Islam that is evil as is practiced at its worst in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran. It is an evil philosophy implemented by evil men. And they are not going to go away. There is absolutely no moral justification for these people's actions in any way, shape or form.

We are going to have to face these folks sooner or later. I feel like I am living in Berlin in the 1930’s. Europe partied hardy while civilization was collapsing around them. The oceans won’t protect our homeland this time. Look what they did on 9-11 with 11 men and some box cutters. Imagine what they can do with an atomic bomb in a shipping container or a missile fired from Venezuela. A cyber attack will literally bring this nation to a standstill and throw us back to the stone age. 

This country needs to get its collective face out of the electronic gizmos and take a hard look at the reality that faces us. ½ of working Americans pay no taxes; 1 out of every 5 Americans is on food stamps; real unemployment is at 15%; the President of the United States is about to propose dismantling unilaterally 80% of the nuclear arsenal that has kept relative peace since World War II; oil prices are surging; the very existence of Israel is at stake; the national debt is reaching unsustainable levels in the trillions of trillions of dollars. And Obama is jamming the blues singing Sweet Home Chicago in the White House while the rest of America is mesmerized by all sorts of electronic gadgets and gizmos.

We need to wake up out of our electronic and digital fantasy world before it is too late. We need to get our heads out of the sand and at least for a little while take things seriously. No American can assume that he/she is safe from the evil that is in the world, or that it will simply go away by burying his/her head in an I-Pad. It doesn’t work that way.

Unless we do that, we will be in for a rude awakening when the juice is turned off, and won't we be surprised.  Life is a Cabaret, dear friend.  Come to the Cabaret.