2000-09-24 - 20:39 MDT

September 24, 2000

WANT

A large part of our world is in the old, shopworn phrase, "dire straits," slavery, hunger, ethnic cleansing and every variety and combination of those things exists in this world --today !

There is a book, "Thunder From The East: portait of a rising Asia," (Alfred A. Knopf -- 360 pages --$27.50) that will be a must read for me.

As well as giving the "Big Picture," and holding out hope, it details verified facts about such things as teen age girls sold into prostitution to feed the rest of the family, a great grandmother in Indonesia starving herself so that her family's children could eat. The book holds out a bit of hope that Asia will come out of their almost insurmountable problems.

But what about Africa where slavery and cruelty have been the way of life for centuries ? South America has its own abusive regimes and corruption. Mexico and Central America are more spoiled apples in the barrel. The trite, hackneyed verbiage of, "There is, a rotten apple in every barrel," is now, "the unspoiled apple is smothered in a mass of rotten apples.

Bigotry, discrimination abounds, everywhere -- for instance we shudder when we hear of these poor women whose vaginal openings are almost completely sewn shut. Why ? Because for centuries the Male Power Faction in that part of the world still believes and has decided that women are evil creatures and who would bed every man in sight if they aren't sewn up. It horrifies me, just the very thought of it. Yet in our own country we have groups and organizations who have in their own heads that people as a group are evil by nature and if not restrained by some draconian means or another, including prisons, will sink themselves in the bottomless pits of SIN and degredations of all kinds -- themselves.

Now there are groups forcing old classical books off school library shelves because of some perceived contagion spreading from person to person. Books that were required reading when we were in school, but are now polluted and might cause impure thoughts amongst the populace. And yet those of us who at one time or another in the far past were the ordinary run of snot nosed boys a goodly portion of us knew all the good places to read in the Bible. And while we are at it, isn't every conceivable offense against man and nature carefully and with diligence described and blue printed there ?

Political Correctness is now covering up the dirty messes by careful phrasing and propagating the same ball of worms to the nth degree. And the super nicey-nice who wouldn't say or smell crap even it it were smeared on their upper lip -- and would probably strangle while trying to find a PROPER phrase.

Just like a cat, cover it over and walk away from it -- and while we are at it -- blame it on some other faction. Many times when confronted by their misdeeds these characters (the ones above reproach) hypocritically make a public confession of their sins -- complete with tears streaming down their cheeks. Those are the ones who screamed at the common man and called him to task for his petty violations.

If my memory serves me right the Nixon crew came out rather badly over that scandal. Jimmy Schweigart (spell), the Bakers - Jimmy and Tammy Faye. Going back in history, there are so many of those Guardians for the Public Good who would not and in some cases could not live up to the standards they expected us commoners to abide by. Not just the religious, and political but many other groups have sought to run things as they saw fit.

The living conditions, poverty wise, illness wise, freedom wise, human abuses wise in all countries demonstrate that we all are sorely in WANT.

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