Things aren’t the Way they should be. The Question is: Were they ever?

Walk through any bookstore and one fact jumps out at you more than any other. It is the fact that the world of bestsellers has been taken over by the politicians and pundits. None for the good I might add.

The books are fodder for a nation of people who have decided that reading something that fits the way they think is more important than reading something that might be the truth.

It doesn’t matter what party you belong to. Republican, Democrat, Green, Libertarian, the books all fill a mold that carries the same message. The way we think is right and the way everyone else thinks is wrong. It is a shame that we have all come to this but it is a natural progression of a world of instant information, both good and bad, both honest and false. It is the times we live in and these times carry a fundamental flaw that many of us don’t care to rectify. We don’t demand the truth be spoken. We only demand the truth as we see it be told. This isn’t the way it once was. Or was it?

I often ponder if things are worse now than they were when I was a young man growing up. Certainly the American dream seemed easier to find fifty years ago. Mothers were able to stay home and fathers were able to bring home paychecks that offered the promise of newer, better things for a family. Made in America was a given and not a slogan to try and stem a tide of jobs being washed overseas.

College was a nice addition to a person’s resume but wasn’t essential. High paying jobs at steel factories and auto plants and construction companies allowed young men to start earning a solid wage just as soon as they finished walking down the aisle at their high school graduation ceremony. High school sweethearts were immediately wed as the desire to start a family to enjoy the harvests of all the opportunities offered were goals of many Americans. Things were easier then I truly believe. I ask again however, were they better?

I remember the killings of a president and a civil rights leader. I remember young blacks, serving their country in Viet Nam and coming home to a town that still had businesses that said they were not welcomed to enter their establishments and no one said that was wrong. I recall race riots and riots about a war that had gone mad. I recall walking through an airport terminal in my uniform and being spat on by a young girl who screamed in my face that I was a baby killer. I remember all her friends with their signs of hatred not for the war but for my friends and I whose only affront was to honor our country’s call.  

I watched as governors stood in front of colleges and said no blacks can come in. Finally they were allowed but not because they deserved this basic right as an American but because they were a portion of a quota or could play a sport better than most.

I recall the giant factories and mills pouring tons of damaging toxins into our air as entire cities become clouded with the silt and odors of progress. I watched as a great lake went from dirty to being filthy. I watched them temporarily close from bacteria levels produced by dumping with no concerns or safeguards as to what the future of our lakes and forests would become.

I remember it all as if it was just yesterday and those yesterdays have melded into the moments of today that seem to have fallen further down the moral sinkhole rather than having moved away from it.

I could go on and on but I will leave you with this last thought.

I believe we as a nation are not where we should be. I also believe we have never been. We have tried over the decades to varying extents but always have left our course to the politicians and pundits who have convinced us that what they believe is all good and that whatever in this country is wrong or that is hateful rests on the shoulders of others. We the people have never taken our job seriously enough. We collectively have not spent enough time looking for the truth, correcting the injustices and making our country the place it could be.

To be sure we have done many great things. In many cases we have done better than the entire world in making this a great country for all of us. Yet there is so much more we should have been and can become if we stop spending time resting on our laurels and blaming others for our failures.

The greatest beauty of this country is that nothing is ever too late. All of us, in our own way can become more involved in righting a wrong, or fixing an injustice, or making our country better and safer. There are great tasks; noble endeavors just waiting for us to become involved.

We don’t need to read someone else’s agenda driven books. We just need to look inside ourselves and bring the good out that has lain dormant for too long. If we do and when we do we will have created that country that future generations will fondly recall as the good old days. And it won’t be lip service or nostalgia talking. It will be the truth. Everyone’s truth.