Barbarians at the gate.
Nothing about knives this time.
How many times has our national decline been likened to that of Rome? The comparison started many years ago when I was a teenager….many, many years ago. Cultures and civilizations don’t die overnight, it takes multiple generations of neglect, disinterest or abuse. Today I came across a YouTube video about “the Faces of Appalachia”. It very nearly made me cry. As I watched the monochrome photos of the worn and wrinkled faces, women clothed in tattered and mended but clean dresses, men in time worn suit coats. I recognized these people. They were no relation to me, yet they were the faces of my grandparents and my great Aunts and Uncles. Memories of a not so distant past stared me in the face. Where have they gone, all of these wonderful people are gone.
These humble, yet proud, people lived in a poverty of possessions, but a wealth of spirit. They worked hard, prayed hard and did not accept that they were some sort of victims of corporate America or Capitalism. They wore their pride and honor like a suit of armor, proud of what they had, how they had earned it, and that which we now cannot find anywhere. They left us a legacy of honest work, and a love of the land they lived on and tilled, and we have pissed it all away.
We are being managed, handled, misguided and oppressed by barbarians. We opened the gate for them! We invited them in, hell we voted for most of them, and now we are paying the price. But I fear the full payment is yet to come due. We, the majority, are being destroyed by a minority of barbarians because we have averted our gaze and shirked our responsibility. We let them, like spoiled children, have their own way. Remember that July 4th is Independence Day. How many people still know the meaning of that, other than a family cookout on a grill, which the government wants to ban, with steaks the government wants to ban, and taking vacations the government does not want you to take, because of your carbon footprint? Never mind, just go back to watching the sports channel.
Nothing about knives this time.
How many times has our national decline been likened to that of Rome? The comparison started many years ago when I was a teenager….many, many years ago. Cultures and civilizations don’t die overnight, it takes multiple generations of neglect, disinterest or abuse. Today I came across a YouTube video about “the Faces of Appalachia”. It very nearly made me cry. As I watched the monochrome photos of the worn and wrinkled faces, women clothed in tattered and mended but clean dresses, men in time worn suit coats. I recognized these people. They were no relation to me, yet they were the faces of my grandparents and my great Aunts and Uncles. Memories of a not so distant past stared me in the face. Where have they gone, all of these wonderful people are gone.
These humble, yet proud, people lived in a poverty of possessions, but a wealth of spirit. They worked hard, prayed hard and did not accept that they were some sort of victims of corporate America or Capitalism. They wore their pride and honor like a suit of armor, proud of what they had, how they had earned it, and that which we now cannot find anywhere. They left us a legacy of honest work, and a love of the land they lived on and tilled, and we have pissed it all away.
We are being managed, handled, misguided and oppressed by barbarians. We opened the gate for them! We invited them in, hell we voted for most of them, and now we are paying the price. But I fear the full payment is yet to come due. We, the majority, are being destroyed by a minority of barbarians because we have averted our gaze and shirked our responsibility. We let them, like spoiled children, have their own way. Remember that July 4th is Independence Day. How many people still know the meaning of that, other than a family cookout on a grill, which the government wants to ban, with steaks the government wants to ban, and taking vacations the government does not want you to take, because of your carbon footprint? Never mind, just go back to watching the sports channel.
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