2001-07-12 - 21:36 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Tilt !

I don't think it is just me that notices the slump in civil behavior. So many of the articles in the newspapers, so many comments on the web indicate to me that the civil behavior curve is is downward bending.

There seems to be a somewhat deeply angry, militant attitude evident in our people nowadays. It feels as if everyone is reaching for a cudgel to use whacking someone.

I can't seem to pin it to hot weather as to my mind it has been a rising curve of snarling behavior for years, over little things not worth thinking about.

Good golly, gee, not only don't look anyone in the eye, now it is don't be on the same side of the street or driving in the lane next to somebody of that sort.

I know that cities are getting larger by leaps and bounds, but on having been in cities in Japan regardless of the crowding, courtesy seems to be the prime method of dealing with the world at large over there. Unless it has changed since I was over there.

Along with the whole thing is the total disregard of other peoples rights and feelings. For instance, many times today as we went about our errands instances of someone coming from the left lane, cutting across traffic to make an exit on an off ramp. Weaving and cutting off was rampant. It wasn't even rush hour yet lol, which lasts about four hours in the morning and four hours in the afternoon ends just in time for the crowd going out on the town in the evening to get into the junkmobile dance.

People in the supermarket seem to be demanding ten feet of personal space now while blocking the aisles -- it is getting worse.

People seem to be looking for any minor reason to be offended and be very militant at the top of their voices. Coupled with the philosophy of, "I have the God given right to do anything I desire, take anything I want and go exactly where I want to go in the manner I desire regardless of the result. Everyone better watch out for me because I am too busy." It makes one wonder, thinking that maybe getting a barrel of water and a case of canned beans and heading for the desert would maybe be a hell of a good idea.

Am trying to think about something in the past, not too many years ago. Was it VMI academy which fought to keep female persons from attending and was successful - - - until some one came up with the fact that VMI or whoever it was accepting government money. Uh Huh, then the foo was on the other shut. Now the trend seems to allow organizations to do as they wish regarless of who is left out in the cold. I don't know exactly where we are headed as a nation, seems like we have a president who is tearing down anything that will get in the way of big business getting bigger as well as trying to get my tax money and yours to be given to religious organizations for charity work but allowing them to discriminate against anyone not in their sect.

Talk about ambivalence and turmoil, it seems as if Big Brother and his minions are churning around, spinning and hoping we little guys will be flung off. Making laws and conflicting ones in the long run, when if the ones that have been in existence for years would be enforced no new laws would be needed.

I think it is maybe time to quit waffling about our south of the border neighbors. This total ambivalence started before my time. Way back when, way before the "bracero" program migrant workers from there were hauled illegally up north to work in the beet fields, enabling the big sugar companies to compete with cane sugar purveyors. The people from the south are still coming up here in droves. Working for starvation wages, lliving in shacks without any of the conveniences, ill treated as well, so as to make an unfair profit for the moneybags. Now the merchants of confusion are wanting to give illegal aliens drivers licenses, schooling, medical care -- what next ? Rather than trying to help bring the people south of the border up to our standard of living, we mistreat them here and big businesses are establishing highly polluting maquilladoras south of the border, paying low wages, little benefits and few if any workers rights. (Doesn't it seem that the push is to bring us all down to the level of peons, in all countries ?) I doubt if they will ever be able to get a union going down there south of the border.

In the messy direction our country is going now, some of the big companies are selling pieces of themselves to enterprenurial corporations which in the process of making the deal are cutting the throats of our unions and unionized workers. So when all of us are pushin' burgers at the Golden Arches or slopping mops in buildings and the work we once had is being butchered in Asia or south of our border, lets stop and take a look - - - - I can see no way that all citizens of our United States can become technical whizzes and engineers, so maybe manufacturing rather than being sent out of the country should be retained here. I think that one of the reasons that corporations and stockholders were able to make so much money for years and years is because very quietly manufacturing has been sent to foreign lands, their government letting their people become industrial slaves for a few bribing bucks in the pockets of those in power. And if my reading is correct some of our very big companies had huge money in German indstries before and during the war, and got paid reparations for the damage done to them over there.

So, who in the heck is really benefitting ? Why are our average Joes out looking for a decent job ? Why is there no real security in jobs anymore ? And are the foreigners being brought up to our standard of living ? -- hell no ! That might lower corporate stock a few points and that just can't be allowed to happen.

Video camera surveillance is becoming a reality in the guise of catching red light runners and now in the east I hear video cams are on some streets looking on the sidewalks at the people there. Geez, has anyone seen the possibility for the misuse of same and the horrible consequences of this damn Big Brothering ? Will we eventually get to a condition that existed in Naziland where even the kids would rat on parents, where the only privacy and independence was in a person's mind ? Well, nowadays does any parent give a kid a deserved swat on the butt and stay out of the slammer ? Not speaking of abusers, but of people like myself who can count the non bruising swats on the fingers of one hand -- the kids knowing the possibility of a whipping was there if their behaviour was too far out of line.

So here we are simultaneously and rapidly going in all directions, mouthing horribly and raging at each other.

And then maybe the American Pinball Machine will light up and say Tilt ! . . . . .

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