I worry about this country. I worry about the deep divide among people regarding how to fix this country. I worry that our politicians have framed the argument around political party vs. issues. I worry that some relationships cannot be rebuilt, once the divisiveness has taken hold.
Because the real truth is, our country has been down this road before, and the real truth is, in time, the pendulum will swing back. We have had crooked politicians before. we have had large government before. We have had corporate strongholds on our government. None of this is new.
I post at a political forum. It is where I can get my feet wet by debating others and learning more about issues. It is not a site for the faint-hearted. Gloves come off, and I give as good as I get. From my years of debating at this site, I have learned that we are in an 80-year cycle of politics. We have actually been down this road 3 other times, since this country began. Of course, we all remember the Great Depression. But before that, there were two other times in our country’s history when the economy tanked and people worried that we weren’t going to make it. And we were much smaller then. Much weaker.
So why do I worry? Because, apparently, the sky is falling, and we are all supposed to be very worried that we will lose everything. We look to the stock markets and wonder what will happen to our pensions and retirement funds. We look to the job market and wonder where all those manufacturing and call center jobs went, when we have more people working than ever in this country. We look to the people losing their homes and life savings because of cancer and other catastrophic illnesses that are just too expensive to treat.
And yet, we have been through this before. And we are not as bad off as before. We don’t have hobos jumping trains and being murdered, because there are shelters for the homeless now. Our elderly are not dying from lack of medical care, because we have Medicare and Social Security to help them get by. We have a food chain that can ship food from any part of the world, and so we needn’t worry about starving. Those of us who can’t afford to buy our family weekly meals can get financial assistance.
So we are better off than we were. But still I worry. I worry that we might lose these safety nets that our country built so that this country could be as strong as the weakest person.
Today, I offer my worries to God, to my belief system. All this is just as it should be. I am merely a witness. Amen.