RECYCLING? GREAT IDEA!

        Today, Wednesday, is America Recycle Day. Great idea, and one long past due, long past the time we should be doing this automatically. However, there are things that should not be recycled and unfortunately inertia, apathy, and sheer laziness allow for it.
     One of the worst things we do is recycle people. We keep them in positions of power and influence long after their sell by date. Simply due to inertia, they remain in office and we get stuck with a Congress that does not function, a Presidency which is broken and a country and in fact, a world, divided in two, with the top 1% owning half the world's wealth.
      So how do we recycle? Simple. For the things we throw out such as aluminum or plastic or papers there are bins and yet some people find it difficult or too annoying to do so, so for their laziness our kids will suffer. Fines ought to do the trick, stiff fines. Money talks, as they say. Invading the pocket hurts.
     But what about the other things that are being recycled? Today we have old ideas of hatred and prejudice being recycled, some in partially new wrappers, but not enough in disguise that we do not recognize them. We see the inability of people to turn away from recycled ideas about gender, about the relationships between men and women and who must take responsibility for it.
     We see recycling of the idea of greed and that the government should serve the office holder rather than the office holder serve the people. So greed blooms and blossoms, but with rank roots and poisonous buds. We see progress rebuffed and our old mistakes come back  to haunt us as outmoded ideas, programs that did not work, come back from the graveyard of such things and there we are, stuck in the non recyclable yard.
     What happens when we do not recycle people? Well, here in the Village we have a man and his coterie who  think they are to be there forever and a day. Their ideas are old, their thoughts are withered, and the Village pays the price in financial instability, purposeful blindness, and a shaky future as bills and errors come home to roost. Not a great situation.
    But in the world at large it is even a worse idea. There are no more public servants. Statesmen of dignity, enriched with the idea of public service, of paying it forward, are few and far between. We see demagogues begin to repopulate the ranks of so called leaders of countries. We see genocide and ethnic cleansing taking place and no one does a thing so hundreds of thousands of Rohingya are chased out, killed, tortured, mutilated, and their plight just simply ignored. It makes me frightened for what if another group is chosen? What if there is an anti Catholic witch hunt? What if there is a country which decides once more to kill the Jewish people of their country? Where does it end, all this recycling of old and hateful ideas? And when? Not soon enough.
     And now we have one who is quite possibly the worst individual to ever be President of this country. How we were stupid enough, lazy enough, non thinking enough to allow this to happen is another example of selfish thinking and inertia. This is a man whom most Americans do not want to rerun in 2020. This is a man who has the lowest polls ever for people do not trust him, do not feel he is qualified to be President and yet here we are.
     This is a man who surrounds himself with lackeys and true yesmen with no independent thoughts of their own. These people even have the same type of faulty  memories as they appear in front of committees and lie, do not recall, and when pushed up against the wall suddenly do recall what happened and thank the media for reminding them of it. So we had collusion with Russia all thru the campaign and only G-d knows what Putin and Trump are talking about in their very private meetings. Perhaps they talk of plans to get together with the other demagogues of the world and split the countries up? Perhaps Putin reminds Trump  how much he now owes Putin and the day will come to pay that bill! Recycling of human trash and trashy ideas is not a good idea, not at all.
     So what happens when we allow old canards to be recycled? What happens when we do not sort out all the trash? We keep a pig such as Roy Moore in office despite the fact that people concede that rumors and talk and knowledge of his misdeeds were known for years, and even approved of by some. YUCK!!! And when we dig further we find all the gut ugly mess of so many men and their misdeeds. All their apologies do not amount to much when compared to the anguish they have caused, the trust they have spurned and held in contempt thru their actions.
     And finally we have the recycling of the idea that Americans are in the right to carry around assault rifles and just shoot 'em up wherever they  are so moved. So yesterday once again we had a shooting in a school, an elementary school, and only thru the quick reactions of the supervisory adults and teachers that more deaths were averted. How many more times? How many more deaths? How many more bouquets of flowers? How many more teddy bears? Time to trash this idea, no recycling for it.
    So today, we must choose carefully and recycle what we must and should and trash the rest deep within the no return pile.