The world is full of little trickles of water

Some become floods of water in the world, and also in politics. And even little trickles of blood can become death from the cuts of a thousand knives.

What has seemed like little trickles of water and blood in America over the last four decades are many many. Double standards and affirmative action to address obvious past discrimination has evolved to many frustrated young people who can’t meet common standards to compete amongst themselves. American idealism and western standards naively applied to the rest of the world is not reciprocated, and even used against us. Too many American politicians focusing on themselves and their party and financial power have abused the local, state, and federal basic reasons for government, and the trickles of laws, guidelines, and restrictions have compounded. Now many Americans have to hire neighborhood or even local street police to do what taxes used to pay for. And the taxes are still there, just the basic function of domestic protection is not present. Basic education has evolved into basic indoctrination. There are only so many hours in any curriculum, and the 3 R’s have been superceded by indoctrination ideas that have achieved higher priority. And now that we have been attacked, again, so many still give priority to now giving “our attackers from the world” American rights, and want the process to be a legal process, vice a war process. Even many Americans still think the prison system purpose is to rehabilitate criminals, vice lock them up to protect us against them. Again, here is another trickle that has been going on for decades, and now a hard working fellow in Charlotte gets shot while walking his dog on Christmas Eve in his neighborhood by a gang member from LA working on his initiation into “the gang”. And the best intended financial efforts of our federal government elected and appointed types to extend home ownership to the poor, and those buying beyond their means, extended to government policies and scolding that are now being renounced by many of the same government elected types, and then have band-aids put on top of band-aids using their votes in our present financial crisis. Most families know about first aid, and bandages on top of bandages do not stop bleeding wounds until the underlying problem is taken care of. If not, a minor wound can become life threatening.

The old joke about things being dimmest just before things get totally dark do not apply, we hope. While it might apply in the old world, it does not apply in the new world, and the American world, for now. Hence, we know to use our vote to fight for our causes, and to change things. The alternatives are third world, and are just un-American. With almost a year to go to the November 2008 elections, use the vote locally, state, and federal. Most of the issues are “trickle issues”, which is just fine. Let American voters stop the potential floods, or even bleeding deaths from a thousand cuts. It will take decades, but then where we are today took decades, too.