THE GRASS IS A LITTLE
BROWNER ON THE OTHER SIDE.
‘CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET
ALONG’ ISN’T A BAD PHILOSOPHY.
THE VIEW FROM THE VIRGIN
ISLANDS
By John McCarthy
TMV Columnist
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Sometimes a truism just isn't true – so says a non-“truther”.
Instant Karma was popular during John Lennon’s time (if only just to talk about) – “bed- ins” never really caught on – maybe it had something to do with bed head hair?
Instant Rage is all the rage now – it plays out on the news every night and is spun the way you like it depending on which network you watch – but how did we get here?
First, let’s look at how we’re all acting. You see the template at your local day care center every day.
Males and females behaving badly – but it’s not really just badly – it’s exponentially BAD.
Just take a look at the shenanigans in the Congress, where government shutdowns, filibusters and hair-trigger rage dominate.
In the last five years (2009-2013), Republicans have conducted 82 filibusters of presidential nominees. Since that delaying tactic was first allowed in 1806 – it had been used 86 times UNDER ALL PRESIDENTS COMBINED – before President Obama.
I am not a psychiatrist – or even a psychologist (although I have been recommended to some) but if you ask me, people are behaving markedly worse due to a push back from the 9-1-1 attacks.
Osama Bin Laden set the low water mark for behaving badly on that fateful day in 2001.
At first, immediately after the tragedy – people treated each other better – need to merge your car into traffic? No problem. Only two items and need to cut in line at the supermarket? No problem. Lost your wallet and need $100 bus fare to Podunk, Iowa? Well, OK, no problem, mon. Those were the bad ‘ol days after September 11th.
Over time, the elastic band that holds good and evil together in this world got stretched beyond its breaking point by Saudi Arabia’s most famous Jihadi former son – like defective Spandex.
Even a child knows that it is wrong to steal. But most children have stolen something of little value – like a piece of Bazooka bubble gum from the neighborhood store.
No child would think to put a gun to the head of the owner of the store and steal all the money in the cash register. Yet that is exactly what Osama Bin Laden’s actions taught us was possible.
The late World's Most Wanted man did the unthinkable – and by doing so made us all think again –he brought a New World Order to values by crashing four jumbo passenger jets into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
Of course, 9-1-1 cost the U.S. stock market $1.4 trillion and the most recent shutdown of the government by Congressional Republicans “only” cost $24 billion (according to Standard & Poors).
When the last shutdown engineered by the G.O.P. occurred in 1995-1996, the American economy in the dot com boom was just starting to rev its engines of prosperity. Times were good.
There is a word for people who would sabotage what was already being called “The Great Recession” by throwing a monkey wrench into a fragile economy at a time of great vulnerability – it is: “terrorist.”
Yalman Onaran of Bloomberg News warned that the government’s failure to pay its debts during the shutdown would halt $5 trillion in lending to people and businesses and raise the specter of “throw[ing] the U.S. and world economies into a recession that probably would become a depression.”
And there’s still talk that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and his band of merry Tea Partiers are planning to do it all over again. Why would anyone do that? The solution is not to govern by any means necessary – but to lead with diplomacy, finesse and fellowship – leave the Iron Fist to Putin.
The easy answer is: Osama Bin Laden taught us all how to be as “bad as we wanna be.” It is for us as adults in the day care center they call “The Congress” to disregard that kind of information – no matter how powerful its black hole of suction is.
When you think about it, after the attacks of 9-1-1, there was an outpouring of sympathy for New York and the good people who live in New York City – but it was an attack on America – the whole nation was under siege after those coordinated Al Qaeda attacks.
People say the nation came together as one during that trying time – and that the strong, reassuring words of President “W.” Bush – made us all think that things couldn’t help but get better - after all, they couldn't get any worse.
But starting in October 2007, with the anti-Free Market banking and insurance bailouts, the economic order of things charted southwards. It was a race to the bottom.
The people who aren’t rooting for America to succeed have always liked to draw a parallel between the United States and the Roman Empire – implicit in that analogy is that one not so fine day this land of spacious skies, purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain – will fall. Scholars say the fall of the Roman Empire took about 10 years.
It’s tough to say what might motivate someone to purposely set a pressure cooker up in the path of a marathon race of human beings set to explode as they run by.
You just have to look to the longest-lasting feud in history – the Arabs and Jews in the Middle East – to see what happens when "terrorism" is answered with uneven-handedness. It becomes a war that literally NEVER ENDS.
No solution in sight. And that’s not the way I see it all coming down for America. We are too good and resourceful of a people to ever let that happen.
John Lennon was trying to teach the world a song to sing in the 1970's - it was called PEACE - maybe if I hum a few bars you'll remember. Peace, like charity, begins at home.
Washingtonians would probably laugh you out of the room if you tried to suggest there might be a Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr.-type solution to our collective problems.
Sounds old-fashioned, but sitting down and hashing it out face-to-face has been known to work. Skype, Face-Time, texting and email won't do it this time. What do we have to lose by trying?
Sometimes a truism just isn't true – so says a non-“truther”.
Instant Karma was popular during John Lennon’s time (if only just to talk about) – “bed- ins” never really caught on – maybe it had something to do with bed head hair?
Instant Rage is all the rage now – it plays out on the news every night and is spun the way you like it depending on which network you watch – but how did we get here?
First, let’s look at how we’re all acting. You see the template at your local day care center every day.
Males and females behaving badly – but it’s not really just badly – it’s exponentially BAD.
Just take a look at the shenanigans in the Congress, where government shutdowns, filibusters and hair-trigger rage dominate.
In the last five years (2009-2013), Republicans have conducted 82 filibusters of presidential nominees. Since that delaying tactic was first allowed in 1806 – it had been used 86 times UNDER ALL PRESIDENTS COMBINED – before President Obama.
I am not a psychiatrist – or even a psychologist (although I have been recommended to some) but if you ask me, people are behaving markedly worse due to a push back from the 9-1-1 attacks.
Osama Bin Laden set the low water mark for behaving badly on that fateful day in 2001.
At first, immediately after the tragedy – people treated each other better – need to merge your car into traffic? No problem. Only two items and need to cut in line at the supermarket? No problem. Lost your wallet and need $100 bus fare to Podunk, Iowa? Well, OK, no problem, mon. Those were the bad ‘ol days after September 11th.
Over time, the elastic band that holds good and evil together in this world got stretched beyond its breaking point by Saudi Arabia’s most famous Jihadi former son – like defective Spandex.
Even a child knows that it is wrong to steal. But most children have stolen something of little value – like a piece of Bazooka bubble gum from the neighborhood store.
No child would think to put a gun to the head of the owner of the store and steal all the money in the cash register. Yet that is exactly what Osama Bin Laden’s actions taught us was possible.
The late World's Most Wanted man did the unthinkable – and by doing so made us all think again –he brought a New World Order to values by crashing four jumbo passenger jets into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
Of course, 9-1-1 cost the U.S. stock market $1.4 trillion and the most recent shutdown of the government by Congressional Republicans “only” cost $24 billion (according to Standard & Poors).
When the last shutdown engineered by the G.O.P. occurred in 1995-1996, the American economy in the dot com boom was just starting to rev its engines of prosperity. Times were good.
There is a word for people who would sabotage what was already being called “The Great Recession” by throwing a monkey wrench into a fragile economy at a time of great vulnerability – it is: “terrorist.”
Yalman Onaran of Bloomberg News warned that the government’s failure to pay its debts during the shutdown would halt $5 trillion in lending to people and businesses and raise the specter of “throw[ing] the U.S. and world economies into a recession that probably would become a depression.”
And there’s still talk that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and his band of merry Tea Partiers are planning to do it all over again. Why would anyone do that? The solution is not to govern by any means necessary – but to lead with diplomacy, finesse and fellowship – leave the Iron Fist to Putin.
The easy answer is: Osama Bin Laden taught us all how to be as “bad as we wanna be.” It is for us as adults in the day care center they call “The Congress” to disregard that kind of information – no matter how powerful its black hole of suction is.
When you think about it, after the attacks of 9-1-1, there was an outpouring of sympathy for New York and the good people who live in New York City – but it was an attack on America – the whole nation was under siege after those coordinated Al Qaeda attacks.
People say the nation came together as one during that trying time – and that the strong, reassuring words of President “W.” Bush – made us all think that things couldn’t help but get better - after all, they couldn't get any worse.
But starting in October 2007, with the anti-Free Market banking and insurance bailouts, the economic order of things charted southwards. It was a race to the bottom.
The people who aren’t rooting for America to succeed have always liked to draw a parallel between the United States and the Roman Empire – implicit in that analogy is that one not so fine day this land of spacious skies, purple mountain majesties and amber waves of grain – will fall. Scholars say the fall of the Roman Empire took about 10 years.
It’s tough to say what might motivate someone to purposely set a pressure cooker up in the path of a marathon race of human beings set to explode as they run by.
You just have to look to the longest-lasting feud in history – the Arabs and Jews in the Middle East – to see what happens when "terrorism" is answered with uneven-handedness. It becomes a war that literally NEVER ENDS.
No solution in sight. And that’s not the way I see it all coming down for America. We are too good and resourceful of a people to ever let that happen.
John Lennon was trying to teach the world a song to sing in the 1970's - it was called PEACE - maybe if I hum a few bars you'll remember. Peace, like charity, begins at home.
Washingtonians would probably laugh you out of the room if you tried to suggest there might be a Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, Jr.-type solution to our collective problems.
Sounds old-fashioned, but sitting down and hashing it out face-to-face has been known to work. Skype, Face-Time, texting and email won't do it this time. What do we have to lose by trying?
If Motor City Madman Ted Nugent had to look President Obama
straight in the eye and call him what he called him – mano e mano – could he do
it? I don’t think he has the cojones.
But what do I know? I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist and I’m living in a grass hut with no electricity in the Virgin Islands.
Does anyone know if it costs more to lie down on the couch than to sit in the chair?
But what do I know? I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist and I’m living in a grass hut with no electricity in the Virgin Islands.
Does anyone know if it costs more to lie down on the couch than to sit in the chair?
© 2014 John Francis
McCarthy/Secret Goldfish Publishing House
John McCarthy is an
investigative reporter, artist and photographer living in the U.S. Virgin
Islands. Please send comments to johnfmccarthy807@msn.com
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