Observations from Matthew

I sit and watch the news a lot. As I take in the days events and thank the good Lord for all my blessings (ie. walking away from another flight), I wonder and many times stew about how people can really suck. The cynical aura that is so pervasive in our nation and the 5 year old mentality of the news and people who make the news. No wonder our kids are so disrespectful. They see it every day not only on TV but in their towns in how adults interact right in front of them. I find it comical to see grown men and especially women who still act like its high school forming their power cliques and socially bullying those they think they can either manipulate or intimidate. Women are definitely their own worst enemy in that sense. But, y'all know me... I don't give a flippin' tinkers damn. I've gotten old enough and senior enough that I can control my existence for the most part.
When we moved to Hohenfels my wife was so relieved knowing that at least for the next 3 years I would not be shot at... at least on a daily basis. We both took stock of our lives and we did not complain about where we lived or what we have had to deal with in our daily lives. Yet we see many who constantly complain that their husbands work too many long hours and are not home at a decent hour and on and on yadda yadda. Many have avoided combat or have forgotten the ordeal of deployments and the affect on the family and they exude such a pessimistic and negative persona that it eats like a cancer at everything and everyone around them. This is not so unlike the country today. Everyone expects something that they think is an obligation of the government to provide. We have become so offensive toward each other. Examples you say? I can buy that 300,000 dollar home and new car and Uncle Sam will bail me out. Parents running on a ball field to attack the coach for a bad play call or another player that smacked his kid. Candidates for public office who act like a couple of 3rd graders on a playground. Kids are self explanatory. Parents who refuse to discipline their kids or hold them accountable. No one can have a simple disagreement without being compared to Hitler, be called a racist or you are derided for being a Christian. (When I was in Iraq it was well known that the small Christian minority was being systematically exterminated. Not one story was published about it.) Those who scream racism have become the racists and those who are expected to fight tyranny and crime have become stupid pacifists.
I guess my point about all this is that in my humble opinion we don’t have a lot of time here. There are forces in this world that are out to completely destroy us. I don’t just mean diminish the USA. I mean annihilation. In this case alone I think it will be our own fault unless we snap out of it. The problem is that the serious times we live in have not really touched the population of the country. We are so focused on political correctness and what has transpired over the last 5 years that we are blinded from what’s right in front of our ugly faces. Can anyone please ask the freakin' question that if/when we pull out of Iraq what next? Or, we know that you want to negotiate with rouge regimes but do you have the nuts to actually fight them when the time for war comes? Can anyone honestly tell me that we won't have to go back in after we pull out due to the simple fact that Al Qaidea IS THERE NOW regardless of the calendar day they actually arrived? Who cares? Am I really the only one that sees this? Remember the sentence above that we are blinded from what's right in front of our ugly faces? How can a society move forward when we are constantly walking backwards concentrating on what we already passed by? There is a movie quote that I like to use in these situations. It's from The Two Towers and it goes something like this... There is a scene where the two mischievous Hobbits, Merry and Pip, were trying to get the trees to fight against Sauroman the wizard and were unsuccessful and Pip says: "Merry, lets just go home. We'll always have the Shire." Merry quickly responds with this profound statement: "Pip, there isn't going to be a Shire!" I think that the American people are totally in the mindset of Pip. We can just go home and live our lives but I think in this case we don't realize that all that crap WILL come to our shores. Those who do not believe that are just extremely naive or they are a waste of my oxygen. Ladies and Gentlemen, the phrase “we support the Troops” is nothing more that a cliché… empty rhetoric from hacks when the camera is on. People, pundits and politicians say it so much that it has desensitized the folks and the Troops for that matter. Almost everyone in the Federal and State Government is so on the take that the prison system is going to have to have an early release program so we can just govern the country. Where is the leadership and the attitude of polls and pundits be damned and why is there such a problem with the people who are supposed to be leaders working to solve problems instead of creating nonexistent problems for the sake of a campaign issue? My guess is that this desensitization has caused almost the entire population to lose its moral and ethical compass and we better figure it out damn quick. The way I have seen things work in our government is that we don’t even attempt to fix a growing problem until it has spiraled out of control and then we are fighting on our backs. And who pays the price? Furthermore, if there is one thing I know it’s this: The US Government is the worst custodian of your money that it is given to run it. The more you give it; it just wants more so it can be spent on another “good idea fairy” program that redistributes it to someone that will just waste it ensuring the job of a politician that believes the government is better at taking care of you than YOU are. I know this because I work in the government. We need to get over ourselves and realize that life in our Country is really pretty great, worthy of pride and definitely worth fighting for. We have so much that we have become fat, lazy, self loathing, impatient Britney Spears clones. Stop blaming your own country for the worlds problems you moronic nincompoops!!
Ahh blessed satiety. If we could only hold our heads high and let ourselves enjoy our success and prosperity and be satisfied with it. When you have a spoiled rotten kid, how do you fix him? Super Nanny says you must pay attention, give them rules and boundaries, enforce them consistantly and give the proper reward for the proper behavior. Our problem as a society is that we have lost the boundaries of societal norms that we used to have in years past. Anything goes and the more shocking the more betta.
What the hell... make me king for a day and I'll fix it. Remember, I'm always right and it's such a burden sometimes!!
Sleep well America while rough men (who don't give a crap what you think of them) protect you!!