America's Death Spiral - Blaming Obama, Democrats and Political Correctness

EUROPE

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1932-2015: PEAK OF PATRIOTISM TO EMPTY

 Patriotism of Founders and Greatest Generation Has EVAPORated Since WWII peak.

 Many Americans Now Believe that America Is Responsible For The World’s Instability.

 Founding Americans Were White British - Their Majority and Their Civility Is Gone.

 Today’s Diverse Population and Blacks Are Seeking USA Change to Socialistic Policies.

This is an autobiographical diary of common sense views by a conservative Octogenarian who has witnessed an extraordinary period of change in the American human condition and behavior.

I have witnessed first-hand for 83 years the devolving temperament and changing behavior of Americans for spiraling downward of consecutive decades starting with the many years of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Vietnam War. The resulting consequences of war have apparently scarred the psyche of younger Americans, possibly forever.

The attitudinal damage felt today can be traced back to the negative events that transpired after WW II. The results of degrading patriotism have been relentless and we’ve seen the incremental decay that diminished and eliminated long-standing traditions of American society that endured for over two centuries.

America’s Death Spiral is intended to be provocative and portray a perception of today’s destructive populism affecting more and more Americans as the Greatest Generation population dies off. What’s in it for me and mine attitudes seem to be infecting an alarming number of hands-out for Free-Stuff of disaffected Americans. This is contrary to the Patriotism expressed by JFK’s exhortation of what you have done for your country.

The cradle to grave demands mentality has also led to a disrespect of government and thus diminished Patriotism for the USA. Ultimately the recipients of freebies hold their benefactors in contempt as a defense in retaliation for their subconscious shame. They no longer have the same love of country possessed by the Greatest Generation of WW II and all the preceding generations back to 1776.

I believe that this escalation of an erosion of love of country can be attributed mostly to the more recent generations. Regretfully many were not exposed to older Americans that lived through the privations and struggles of the Great Depression and WW II.

This disaffected group of Americans was essentially the teens and naive youngsters living just after the Korean conflict. They were still the younger and slightly older generation that witnessed the disastrous results of the Vietnam fracas. Those Americans and successive generations are the targets and my persons of interest in the examination of that era.

Fast forwarding to today’s millennial American they have as their closest friend and ally their smart phone rather than another human being to share with, to care for, and spend time with and, heaven forbid, to experience togetherness with their own family members. Family life and togetherness were the more prominent victims of the post-Vietnam declining years.

I plan to examine in this public diary what caused the great revolution of American and worldwide behavior. I see them as models of a societal inversion whereby most issues and contemporary living standards are upside down and inside out compared to my Greatest Generation of the Great Depression and the Greatest Generation.

The greatest victims of the inversion were Family, Freedom, Liberty, and Safety at home and on the streets, greater ethnic and class divisions rather than unity, and the loss of innovation of business opportunity and incentives to achieve the American Dream.

The prism I use for this opinionated examination is that of a first generation son of an Italian immigrant arriving at Ellis Island in 1908. I experienced the usual and natural discrimination accorded new immigrants such as Italians in those times despite my being born in the USA.

Today I view that discrimination as having been beneficial to me. It really stimulated my competitive-juices as I grew older. I was able to thrive and grow economically secure rather than the depressing angst of assuming the role of a victim. Believing that Free Enterprise and Capitalism trumped all barriers that my friends, neighbors, and I encountered. We overcame the minor hurdles posed by discrimination. The light at the end of the tunnel never flickered and was a stimulant for working harder and smarter.

Doing a better job; working faster and better than the next guy; being smarter with education in the sciences; not showing any negativity and being outspoken when appropriate: all these are the not-so-secret ingredients to success in America.

If I were to summarize this lifetime experience in a few hundred words it would be that the conditions existing at the start of my life, in the third decade of 1900, were widespread poverty, downright oppressive circumstances. Unflinching optimism was the stimulant that resulted in an extraordinary, life-saving coalescence of families and ethnic groups.

This family togetherness enabled survival at a tolerable level and provided to most an abundance of loving relationships that money and inheritance could not buy. There was an acceptance and tolerance of the debilitating conditions that otherwise today would cause anarchy in the streets of New York and all other large urban areas.

Therein one can find one of the fundamental differences between society of the 30s and the 21st century Americans of today: Family unity vs. the ME Individualism. Interestingly hard times built strong family reliance whereas affluent times resulted in the redundancy of family life and loss of a safe haven when bad times would return again.

People of the great depression era went out of their way to help the even greater downtrodden amongst them. The churches were full to over brimming every Sunday. Standing in the aisles was usual and ordinary – today the churches are 60% empty on Sundays.

Each of the diverse ethnic groups banded together, formed clubs and associations to celebrate their inherited solidarity in order to find the confidence that they were always there to assist their own brethren in need.

It is instructive to note that the various ethnic groups did very well as they bound together as extended families. This flies in the face of Progressives who espouse notions of integrating different races and ethnics by forced measures. We proved that cloisters of ethnic groups living side by side can thrive better because of the extended family construct of assimilation by group sectors. Convincing African-Americans that they needed to be integrated with other races and ethnics is a mistake of enormous proportions at this time. It flies in the face of the common sense of natural cloistering of all species – animal and Homo sapiens.

The Progressive notion of a melting pot nirvana is achievable only after several generations of American residency. When English is the first language of a citizen; when tribal and cultural proclivities fade with time; when the educational parity exists then will we see seamless integration of peoples. Of course with the continuing year-to-year immigration of many different races the parity will always exist for 10% to 20% of the population. So the problems of cultural disparities will continue for the foreseeable future until we no longer attract foreign immigrants.

The people of the Depression were able to survive (without government assistance) by thinking as a family coming together to marshal all the limited resources they possessed to feed, care, and house their famiglia as was the case with the Europeans who brought with them the camaraderie of neighborhood extended-families.

Comparing the people of the Greatest Generation emerging from the Depression and WW II to today’s folks is such a huge contrast that one has to question if today’s people were really the progeny of their previous generations.

Today, because of the abundant and duplicitous government give-away programs of goods and cash, exists as a family in name only for too many of Americans.

The old folks of a family are now housed in human warehouses. They may be fortunate and delighted to be visited possibly once a year, if they are lucky, at Christmas, Easter or Thanksgiving by their children and their grandchildren.

Today’s parental heirs oftentime fight like rabid dogs and cats over the estate of their deceased parents when they are finally dispatched to the hereafter. And because of medical advances that provide the aging much greater longevity these warehoused family members usually experience an extended period of loneliness that is heartbreaking and is an increasing problem for the aged.

Thank God for those assisted living facilities that remember that man’s best friend of Labradors and Golden Retrievers provide an all too brief window of genuine love for the aged. The furry ones provide some relief from the sheer loneliness and despair of old age. These geriatric elders usually suffer 24x7 the discomfort and pain associated with all the common maladies of aging that get worse with each passing year. It’s no wonder that, state by state, legislation is being passed for legitimizing elective suicide. This desire of the lonely never existed when parents were cared-for by living with their children as a family responsibility.

Reversing the time scale to the other evil of loss of family relationships I turn the readers attention to the beginning of life issues. The unborn, all too often, are treated as a form of garbage that can be rid of as sewage or placed in a local dumpster when there exists any inconvenience to the mother or couple. And now, unbelievably, there are harvesters of baby body parts that have discovered another ugly and evil revenue generating business operating in the shadows.

Thus the Progressives and their surrogate feminists earlier devised the narrative of women’s special freedom regarding their right to terminate another human being in the making. This led to the passage of law that exonerated the previously regarded murder by abortion to a business opportunity and the avoidance of responsibility by the WHAT’S IN IT FOR-ME perpetrators.

I remember those earlier days of that yesteryear when the most egregious sin was an abortion performed in secret to hide the sinners. It was regarded then as murder and infinitely more shameful than the error of pregnancy visited upon an unmarried young girl. The latter unfortunate circumstance for the girl, usually an innocent, so encumbered was treated as a very shameful occurrence for the family. The solution usually was to ship the unfortunate, tearful young lady to some relative or friend out of town. Abortion was not an option and the innocent usually was placed for adoption with a loving family exhibiting a welcoming parental responsibility.

Today unmarried girls celebrate pregnancy without the scarlet letter more times than ones that have a responsible man in their lives. Sodom and Gomorrah are replicated in today’s symbolic Beverly Hills and its virtual surroundings. This revolutionary life style is celebrated and showcased in the Hollywood stargazing magazines that are displayed on every check out counter at the retail shopping center. Thus making it more acceptable state of affairs and the sin is white washed away.

Another change that many elders observe in today’s America is the reversal of attitudes of neighbors. The old-time standard was close and friendly relations with one’s neighbors. That neighborly closeness hardly exists any more.

Litigation becomes the first avenue of resolution if a neighbor’s tree overhangs the next-door neighbor’s yard. One Shakespearean play has an act that begins with the admonition that first, let’s kill all the lawyers. Probably foretelling the wishes of society five centuries later in the USA where litigation thrives 5x to 10x more here than in other countries.

There are very few contentious issues that have safe havens from the courts. Lawyers will joke that you can sue over a ham sandwich in the US. The potential of minimizing such treachery is by the losing plaintiffs being forced paying all expenses. This is the standard in England where they experience a small fraction of the civil suits that we have in the US. This no-penalty for a plaintiff losing is unlikely to be eliminated soon in the US and for individual states because of the political contributions by attorneys made for its continuance. Common sense and doing what’s right is not an American virtue in politics today.

It’s no coincidence that the Democrat Party’s largest financial supporters are the litigating lawyer’s gang. How many lawyers do we have today that emulate the most famous lawyer of them all? – Abraham Lincoln.

In those earlier days of the 30’s and 40’s I remember most neighbors feared little about burglary. They hardly ever locked their doors or barred their windows. It was a common understanding amongst the neighbors we had on our row house street to look out for one another.

Neighbors oftentimes acted as extended family members. The women and girls of our neighborhood could walk around freely in complete safety even at night. Pity the poor sucker who would ever think of accosting any one of them. The men of the neighborhood would instantly marshal a force en masse that could disable a platoon of miscreants and I mean disable. Thus there was an example of being my brother’s keeper as the neighborhood’s call to arms in any emergency.

Fast forward to the last decade. A woman is raped (Kitty Genovese case) repeatedly on a street of row homes in New York City. Several hours elapsed and sadly no one calls the police or comes to her aid. Avoiding involvement has unfortunately become common operating standard for America’s big cities.

No wonder that the Police are now considered the enemy of people of color by the people of color. No longer are the police considered and treated as the difference between anarchy and the protective force on the streets or in one’s own home. They are now the targets of violent felons and remain usual suspects when they have the audacity to defend themselves by responding in kind. That is what I meant when I suggested things are upside down, inside out and sideways today in America. When over 70% of young ghetto blacks have criminal records it is mindboggling to understand how the tribal solidarity that emerges works by alleging Police malpractice with the family always swearing to the perpetrator’s innocence. They are all innocent good boys that have been profiled unjustly.

Most children and many adults today have no inkling of who the Founding Fathers were or what is contained in the Declaration or the Constitution. Politicians today are perceived and believed to be unabashed liars but sadly that is taken for granted without any call to correct the mess in Washington DC.

In my grade school days the Pledge of Allegiance and Civics were basic essentials of the daily curriculum. Not so in these days of Political Correctness. Other social programs have squeezed out Civics and American history. Clearly the Progressives have accomplished another important agenda item that ultimately leaves the average American completely devoid of any knowledge of their country’s history. The Progressives benefit because any contemporary change that violates Constitutional protections would not be noticed or challenged.

The forgotten and sometimes maligned Founding Fathers risked life and limb and their wealth in order to create liberty and freedom from the foreign occupiers of their land, the British who are the US’s closest ally today.

The first President George Washington had proven himself to all American’s of that day as totally trustworthy. He was regarded by all Americans of that era as a man of integrity and impeccable truthfulness. He refused to serve as President any longer than necessary once he felt he could safely leave the country in competent hands.

Today’s politicians are politicians for life contrary to the Founders and George Washington’s ideology of limited service.