Choices::Consequences

4/18/2020

On and Off, Pro and Con, Old and New: we are often confronted with these kinds of choices. Our morning square-table discussions today covered several things of this nature. From progress and/or the lack thereof on our remodeling process in the smaller house down the hill, to the progress and/or the lack thereof in fighting the “pandemic.” If Barb and I could get the world to listen to us instead of arguing with us, we can solve all these things in a very short space in time. Nothing to it! (We might have to move backwards in time and get a few things started over, however. ugh.)

But seriously, I do not understand the lockdown of a nation on account of an epidemic which has come around and a panic stricken public and its officials seemingly so void of common sense.  In the worst case of “hotspots” (as they are being called) only slightly more than 5% of illnesses end in deaths. Yes, I know how terrible it sounds to say “only” when we’re talking about deaths. But, think of 95% of the cases surviving, coupled with the fact that only about 8% of the total population are the most probable to attract the disease, whether there is a quarantine of healthy people or not. [Question: Ever heard before of quarantining the healthy and not just the ill?]

Small businesses, which are the lifeblood of all communities for sustaining a community lifestyle which is the most highly esteemed manner of living in America (and, I suspect around the world), cannot survive a lockdown such as we’re going through. It seems to me that the government has done what it needed to do in order to get the bulk of people to know how to take proper precautions and worry themselves through this on their own! Are we too complacent (whether laziness or ineptitude) to see through this on our own? Can we not think and decide what is best for ourselves and our families? Shall we capitulate to the “all-sufficiency” of a government which is hell-bent on criticizing one another to death? One which is now $26 Trillion in debt to itself and its world-wide populous?

Dear friends: if you still think for yourselves, and especially if you think the God of the Universe, to whom we sing praises such as “Oh, Lord, My God, How Great Thou Art!”, if He is your sufficiency, is it alright for you to be dependent upon a government such as would on the one hand, offer to give $1.5 trillion as a stimulus package, then on the other hand, add such ridiculous pork-barrel projects to the bill as another 3/4 trillion of debt all for things totally unrelated to the original need for the bill? Does any one of you think that’s ok? THAT’S NOT OK, FOLKS! WE,…WE NEED TO STOP THIS continual idiocy!  

And here we sit, with another election before us. Do you reckon we will send home the perps? Or will we just say, “Well, I can’t do anything about this.” and just let the idiots and alligators go back to the swamp for 2 or 6 more years?

I don’t know. When I ponder all that I’ve seen since 1952, when I think of some of the really stupid mistakes I’ve made being just an “average joe” (if I’m average, there is 50% of the people below me making more mistakes and 50% of them above me making just a few less), then I think of the combined sum of all stupid mistakes—-no wonder we’re in such a mess! It is a compassion, an urgent desire, a great hope of mine that can get across to whomever might read this to stop making the same mistakes I and my generation made. Thus far, the progeny out-mistake the progenitor. A real mess of stuff is all around us, and we keep stepping in it!

Thanks for ready, the Elder

(PS: I didn’t blame anybody; I blamed every body.)