Category Archives: American People.

American culture, American People., Breaking Bad finale, Government shutdown, positive thinking, Society

Badly Broken

My fellow Americans, at this point, all I can do is urge you to sweat.
That’s right, sweat.
It’s the greatest fertilizer in the history of the world, a surefire way to make anything grow – and something that is severely lacking right now in our country that would, more than likely, fix a lot of our issues.
And there are many issues, most all of which, start with us.
We’ve got it all wrong. We want to blame Washington for our problems. We want to blame politicians, presidents and the pundits who fan the flames in the media.
We should be blaming ourselves – or better yet, stop blaming – and start sweating again. We need to get to work on us, because we are morally, socially and physically broken.
And broken badly.
Don’t like Obamacare? Well, don’t blame Obama. Don’t like the Republicans who shut down the government? Well, don’t blame the Republicans. Because we shut down long before they did.
Think of why this debate exists in the first place? Because we have an inverted pyramid of a population, sucking the economy dry with the need for more doctors and drugs, which raises the costs of care. And we have begged for the politicians to fix it. So this is the solution they came up with. And now we’re angry?
You’d think 90 percent of our population is upset as much as we’ve heard about it this week. But not even – or barely even – 50 percent of eligible voters voted in the last election. Seems like we like to complain, whine and moan, but not actually, you know, get our hands dirty and do anything to change it.
We cannot sit back and just wait for others to fix problems we the people created.
Frankly speaking, we’re obese, we’re lazy and we are just waiting for others to do it for us. We ask for more from our government, it in turn gets bigger, thus taxes us more. Then, we get upset at those taxes, and the solutions offered, by the people we didn’t care enough to vote for – or against.
Yet I fear we are incapable or up to the task of changing it ourselves. Our efforts are lacking, our resolve is weak, our morals eroding.
More people cared about the finale of a show about a teacher-turned-amateur druggist than do the government shutdown or impending debt ceiling debate. Breaking Bad, no matter how well acted, directed and reviewed, represents a vast portion of what’s happening to us.
We used to watch finales involving friends (Friends, Seinfeld), people who frequented a bar (Cheers), or a middle-class family learning life together (pick one of many).
Now, our most popular shows are violent, obscene and worst of all, try to paint a face of empathy on the characters who are the worst. Mobsters (The Sopranos), murderers (Dexter), drug-makers (Breaking Bad) or drug-peddlers (The Wire). We’ve turned these characters into sympathetic figures and call it real TV progress because of all the nuance and character conflict.
The story of a teacher who had cancer, didn’t have insurance and turned to making meth is not just a television fantasy, it is a fantasy that consumed 10 million people last weekend into sitting on pins and needles to see how it would end. I’ve seen more media attention and stories about what it all meant, what was Walt’s legacy and the lasting effect of the show than I have just about anything else – including what’s going on in Congress.
And we wonder what’s wrong with us?
Our priorities are skewed, as we sit in our own bathwater and call others dirty and corrupt.
Have we learned nothing from history? We’re following every other great civilization in world history…right to the depths of demise. And none – not even Rome – were taken down from marching armies, but from within, by its own moral, social and economic declines.
Too bold? Too apocalyptic? I beg to differ.
To heal, to fix what ails us, we must first fix ourselves.
We too gladly hand off our liberties. We spend more than we make, then we want to blame someone else for our failure to plan. We don’t hold doors open. We don’t say thank you when someone does it for us.
We dress like slackers. We hold an aura of disdain and contempt in the general way in which we carry ourselves. We expect, but we don’t respect. We’re so engrossed with what is going on in our own little bubble, that we can see past our little walls.
The sooner we learn it’s not about us, the better off we become, the more we live our lives with a greater good in mind. We worry about our younger generations, but that focus should be on us. If we are better people, better parents, better spouses, we produce better children.
We prance around staring at our phones, but wonder why we’re losing contact and that feeling of closeness with family and friends. Because there is no connection. We impose our will on others, yet wonder why no one else is more understanding, forgiving or sincere.
And we’re easy targets for the current medium of the media. Information fed to us 24/7, over Twitter, scrolling footers on TV and with outrage and a false sense of urgency on everything has numbed us to anything. And when we are paying attention, misinformation is used as a scare tactic to paint a picture in a color by numbers sort of way.
We are what’s wrong with America. We don’t vote, but we complain about who we didn’t vote for. We are shocked by the violence in the world today – from mass shootings at schools and public places, to acts of terrorism. Yet in the next breath, we’re lauding the latest incomprehensibly violent movie or video game. We’d rather read 50 Shades of Gray, The Da Vinci Code and other fiction, then pretend it is real and that it somehow represents our struggles in life.
The variable in anything and everything is us. Always.
We lack any sense of discipline to change our course and our situation. We give in too easily. We medicate with drink, food, money and bright shiny objects, mostly because the very heart of our being is crying out from the inside and telling us how wrong it all is.
Something is working on us, something despicable, something dark, something sinister.
And every hour we stay late at work, every skipped family event, every day we say our little lies, gossip about friends, family and those we barely know or don’t even know, the deeper we let it work into our culture.
We are apathetic and it is becoming pathetic.
Lack of concern, lack of care, lack of passion and compassion. We have stopped caring enough to fight for or against anything that truly matters in the end. Instead, we get more worked up over the latest software updates than we do the pursuit of liberty and the laws surrounding it.
We have become lazy with our lives, our jobs, our friendships, our marriages, our parental duties. We don’t protect what we have, making it easier for it to be taken.
Think we’re fine? Fine. Keep waiting for something else to happen or someone else to fix it.
It’s called a decline for a reason. It’s slow and not obvious.
The opposite – literally in spelling – of “live” is “evil.” The less we live, truly and energetically live, the further we fall into the faceless, nameless evil that exists. If we’re not willing to protect ourselves, who will? We are the problem. We are badly broken, not just breaking bad.
But we can be the solution.
How do you avoid a complete moral bankruptcy and shutdown in our society? Go back to the roots. De-weed them, clean them off, make them whole, feed and water them with the right nourishment so that they will grow strong once more.
That nourishment is good, old-fashioned, sweat.
We must get to work on ourselves, sweating through the pain and growth of fixing us. From our bodies to our minds. Build things. Engage in our relationships. Cultivate our friendships. Plant positive thoughts and ideas in our children so that they may spread to the world. Pray more, text less. Stop letting others define us, instead refining ourselves into who you want to be.
Pick up the proverbial shovel and start digging, in the very same fashion we built this empire and became envy of the world.
If everything around us is falling apart, if we don’t like the current ways of the world, then our only real choice is to break away and invest in what we can control: ourselves.
And it starts with a little sweat.
We are the people. We are the beacon of freedom, of hope, of opportunity.
Time to start acting like it.


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American culture, American People., Fiscal Cliff, Gun Control, Hollywood, Sandy Hook Elementary, Society, United States

The Unused Power of the People


Much has been made of the now-averted “fiscal” cliff, but truthfully, we’ve gone off the selfish cliff.
From almost forgetting the horror of Sandy Hook to our resignation that it’s OK to raise taxes and spending as long as it’s not my taxes, we just don’t seem to care unless we are affected directly.

What will it take for us as a people to act? We have so much more power standing collectively than fighting as individuals.

Should someone come into your home and just grab whatever money you have in your wallet or purse each night? Would that do it? Would you feel violated? Outraged?
I know several friends and family members that are completely fine with the argument that the country’s wealthiest earners should pay more in income and payroll taxes.
“I don’t make over $400,000 a year,” said someone to me recently. “Why should it bother me? And those people should pay more.”
It should bother you, me and everyone because even though it’s not you this time, it will be next time. They’re coming for more money. And they start with the rich and work their way down the line.
See, the conversation and discussion is all wrong – this isn’t just about one economic group in this nation, it’s about all income levels. Whether you pay $150 in taxes or $1.5 million, where is every dollar going and why?
What we should be asking – no, demanding – from our elected officials is this: why is there a need to raise taxes on anyone? Why do you need more of our money? We can’t trust you with what you get from us now!
The package that was passed earlier this week to avert said “fiscal cliff” will add $4 billion in debt. How is that even possible? How do you raise taxes and over time still add that much money to the deficit? What’s worse is the deal made by Congress earlier this week was seen as a compromise – of course it was. Because they created this mess, let’s all congratulate them for averting disaster and putting off the debt ceiling conversation for three months.
Well done, guys and gals.
What if we all agreed to not vote for anyone, any incumbent, who contributes to raising the debt? We might get 100 new elected officials every year for the next four years, but we’d eventually find people who do what we want them to, right? Because as crazy as it sounds, that’s what our elected officials in Congress are there for – to do the will of the people. They represent us.
Except they don’t. They represent themselves and re-elections. And as for the “us”, well, we can’t get out of our own way and get our stuff together in terms of values, guiding principles and general decorum.  
There was an article posted late Monday night about how all the staffers and members of Congress had to order out and get pizza and wings on New Year’s Eve and how depressing that was.
I laughed because I thought it was the punchline of a joke. That’s not sad. Millions of Americans eat like that every New Year’s Eve – and not by choice. Millions of Americans work late into the night on a holiday because they get triple pay for overtime. We need more because now we give more than ever before in our history.
Meanwhile, we spend less time with family, with friends, with spouses.
This vacuum is why Facebook and Twitter exist. They keep us connected to the world when we’re so wrapped up in ours. Except they dehumanize our relationships, take the emotion out and make everything instant and matter of fact.
What do we get when we spend less time with our children? Or better yet, what do they not get from us? How about our spouses? Are marriages stronger? Relationships of any kind, when less time and energy and effort go into them?
And we ask ourselves how we ended up with the massacre of elementary school students? Shootings in a movie theater? High divorce rates? Rising debt? Unmotivated masses, shrinking more each day into their own bubbles.
Wake up! We are the problem. We don’t take the time to fix it. We talk about it on Facebook and Twitter or at our holiday parties and then we move on. Next issue. On to my personal problems, right?
Wake up! Is it going to take your child’s elementary school being unspeakably shaken by tragedy before something is actually done to protect them? I mean, I’m in favor of the Second Amendment, but I’m not sure why anyone needs to be able to buy a Rambo-style machine gun and as much ammo as they can fit in their car trunk.
But Congress can’t talk about that for a few more weeks because they’re “fixing” the “fiscal cliff” they created by mismanaging our money to begin with. So what makes us think these geniuses can fix something like coming up with a logical, modernized second amendment that while protecting the rights of citizens to arm themselves, won’t allow for them to pretend they are preparing for Red Dawn, Part II?
That debate that everyone said we needed to have on gun control lasted in the media for all of 10 days – right up until Christmas and Kim Kardashian announcing she was becoming Kayne West’s baby momma.
We’re running out of time, my friends. What our ancestors and American decendants worked so hard to build in terms of values is being short-sold by our own selfishness, obsession with the material and overall failure to act. We expect others to clean up these messes, but we don’t take action – or build sustained action – ourselves.
There is great power in the people – us, the collective whole that make up our society. If we can set aside these specific arguments, say on faith, tax brackets, marriages, for a brief moment and look at the bigger picture to unite under, we’ll have a greater success at reclaiming and reestablishing our guiding principles that sustain our first world way of life and the freedoms we so take for granted.
Is this the kind of world we want to live in or leave our children with?
Case in point: a recent pollsuggests a majority of Americans don’t feel it’s necessary for Congress to force Hollywood to produce less violence in their products. Yet when every fabric of our vast knowledge suggests that violence begets violence, especially when exposed to the young, why wouldn’t we want that? What if we absolutely forbade anyone under the age of 18 from seeing an R-rated movie, even with a parent?
Our collective selfish nature says we don’t want them to take away what we, as adults, enjoy so much. Do we? Because since Sandy Hook, I can’t watch a violent movie, kudos to you who can. It’s difficult to separate reality from art now. As I said then, everything is different – and it has to be. The very essence and core of our lives is at stake.
What are we doing? What’s it going to take? What will be our breaking point?
Because we are already, quite rapidly, defining our downfall.
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American People., Democrats, faith, Politics, Republicans, United States

The Responsibility of Today



To what do we actually owe one another? To what do we owe the future? What is each person’s responsibility to each other? Is it financial? Is it goodwill? Is it a combination of the two?

Are we not a family, this nation? Something must elicit our national sense of duty and pride. Some sense of self-sacrifice, yet an individual responsibility to maintain our own identity, our own burdens.

Just as in a family, some things we share. Some things are mine, some are yours and some are ours. What we often disagree most about in this country is what you should share with me. The other side is always the one trying to take from you or not giving enough in return.

We’ve lost our ability to communicate. We’ve lost our ability to tell the truth and be honest.

Truth remains absent from our national vocabulary. Whether it is out of fear of truth getting out, telling it outright or the fear of what people will do with it, the truth is often hidden from the public eye.

While I am firmly on one side of the political spectrum and long ago made up my mind on which candidate I will cast a vote for, it is apparent that the interpretation of what is true and correct varies greatly across the political landscape.

For example, we cannot erase our national debt without both cutting spending and raising taxes. It is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. Many corporate CEOs have come out recently to state the same thing. This isn’t a partisan issue, it’s an American issue.

This is not just a slogan or a tagline about making the nation better for our children and their children. This is becoming about survival. We cannot continue to loan money out to everyone under the sun, borrow money from China and overspend at home without the truth and reality that it will destroy us.

If the goal is to do what is right, then, as Mark Bertonlini of Aetna and the other aforementioned CEOs mentioned this week, any fiscal plans must include tax reform and limiting the growth of health-care spending.

But Republicans don’t want to raise taxes on anyone, while Democrats want to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans and don’t want to raise taxes on just the middle class or limit the growth of federal health care spending.

Yet no one wants to discuss the silent truth that limiting all spending and increasing taxes across the board, or broadening the base, is the only way we can begin to address the debt crisis head on.

The simple truth is you cannot tax just the wealthiest two percent of Americans in order to eliminate our deficit. It is not just the wealthy and rich that will see their taxes increase, as there aren’t enough wealthy people to tax at a high enough rate.

Yet we hear no discussion about what this must mean to the middle class and their taxes. Why? Because it loses voters, of course. And this is the problem: no one is being honest about this crisis, especially not during an election. Frankly, it’s unpopular at any time to discuss raising taxes, most especially on the middle class.

We fail to see our own hypocrisy on this. As President Abraham Lincoln once said, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”

To put it bluntly, we’ve reached a point that even taxing all income classes won’t offset the spending.

If finances are tight at home, we don’t spend as much on eating dinner out at a restaurant, or trips to the zoo, or random toys for our children or on their Christmas presents. This is essentially a tax on them. Children are the middle class of the American family. Because leadership overspent, they must deal with the fallout.

It doesn’t mean its fair. But it doesn’t mean it’s not true, either.

What most parents don’t do in that situation is even after raising “taxes” on our children do we continue to spend what we always spent on our own non-essentials. Yet this is what our government will do. We’ll raise taxes on one class, or another, or all, then continue to spend, spend, spend beyond what we’re taking in.

Then again, with issues such as these and so many others, what do we really expect from our leaders? And what should we expect when we exhibit the same poor behavior ourselves, from lack of restraint to being close minded?

We lack the discipline and faith to accomplish our goals. We lack the fortitude to actually behave as we tell people we believe you should. In a way, we should stop blaming politicians and elected officials. They are simply mirroring how we act. They are us. And until we can change ourselves, we can never expect more from them.

Yet this topic is often too difficult or logical for many to have. Asking people to be reflective on their own thoughts and actions is a challenging proposition. Even now, those who read this will believe this is about others, not them. No, this is about you. It’s certainly about me and my own imperfections.

Judging others is easy; labeling people just as simple. Someone cuts you off in traffic, then by all means, give them the finger. How dare they infringe on you and where you are going. Speaking of traffic, is your work commute slow? Blame slow drivers and construction or the weather, because nothing on earth is more important than where you are going.

If your child is failing in school, it must be the teacher’s fault. Not getting that promotion at work, then you should certainly lash out at co-workers, cop an attitude and represent yourself poorly to prove a point.

We’re a critical bunch without ever critiquing ourselves. We’re defensive and protective of our individualities.

Everything is about us. How we are wronged, how we are affected and affected. The greater good only matters if we’re included in that greater good.

How can we expect more from others than we do from ourselves?

Far too often, we let the media dictate what we’re told. And what we hear is often the greatest distortion.

In the 24-7 news cycle and the era of sound bites, words and twisted and manipulated and misconstrued all for the sake of crafting a presentation of what the host or channel wants you to hear. We’re in a dangerous time with the medium of mass media. Straight journalism, reporting, is overwhelming marred and skewed by opinion disguised as fact.

It is a moral hazard to use and twist people’s words into your own, add in descriptive adjectives and repackage it for an impressionable audience. Yet this occurs every minute on MSNBC, FOX and CNN.

Men like Lincoln, Jefferson, and probably both Roosevelts would never be elected today. Lincoln would be called a flip-flopper, indecisive and an extremist.

But have you ever changed your stance? None of us can possibly say that on every topic and issue under the sun we’ve remained unchanged over time. New information and experiences exist. We get older. Our circumstances change. Our opinions are ever-forming and ever-changing – at least they should be.

A lighter example of this was when, as a sports writer, I routinely attacked Peyton Manning. I didn’t like his approach to his teammates, his famous Manning Face and his failure to lead his team in the playoffs to more wins or accept his share of the blame in losses.

Then, one year, he played a spectacular season with a badly injured knee. On top of that, he was humble; keeping stories about all the procedures he received on the knee out of the media. He owned his failures and shared credit. To this day, I don’t know if I was always wrong or if he ever changed or I did, but my opinion changed.

Basically, because life and events are evolving, so should be our opinions and our stances. However, our values and our faith should always remain. Faith is a funny thing, another difficult proposition to discuss. Faith is not religion. Religion is man’s creation, in all its interpretations and variety.

This is just my own understanding of faith. Most would argue faith is deeply connected to religion, and in many cases, I suppose this to be true. However, I have faith in my wife. It is a belief and a trust. I have faith in my children, my family and friends and even faith in some (but not all) of my abilities. I have faith in my favorite sports teams (doesn’t always work out so well).

Faith does not have to be the absence of logic; on the contrary, they can work hand-in-hand.

It is therefore that I would argue that this is not a call for blind faith or religious faith, but faith in each other. That we still have time to change, that we still have time for a grassroots effort of building back up the guiding principles we were founded upon.

We rebuild, we educate ourselves on what we do not know, we work together, and we put aside bitterness.

Politically, there are few who are not supportive of the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. That’s our starting point. Socially, we begin to pull back the reins on the “me-first” attitude. That’s not your parking spot. Everyone else is trying to get to work, too.

It cannot be stressed enough that this begins with us. We are the people in “We The People.” We do not necessarily need to speak in a unified voice to be heard, but we must speak all the same. What is right and just never changes, it just wears different clothing. It’s permissible for us to debate, to stand up for what we believe, while also expressing openness for others to do the same.

The truth is, if we do not change our attitudes, our hearts and minds remain locked away and our resentment and anger builds. This will only lead to failure.

We are a nation divided, not only politically, but socially as well. This has been growing for some time. It is time move on from our division and seek solutions in the facts, in real truth and in moving away from the selfishness that has guided us as individuals for too long.

This is the responsibility of today and we cannot put it off until tomorrow.

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