FIRST DRAFT

     Ever wonder how the world got into this mess we are in? How did everything begin to run downhill and nobody notice? How did progress turn 180 degrees and turn into retrogression and outmoded and dangerous thinking? How?
     It happened because most of us walked through life in a semi coma. As long as we had the job which allowed us to buy our playthings, pay the rent or mortgage and feed and cloth our children, why then all was right in the world. Yes, there were crises that hit us, but for the most part we had insurance and food and clothing and even vacations. Life was good - and for those for whom it was not so good, well....let them try harder was the mantra and again, did we not have  a social safety net for such people and problems?
     And then trouble. We got greedy. We wanted more. It was not enough to have a home; we needed bigger and fancier ones. We needed to not only keep up with the Joneses but overtake them, show them up. We needed fancier, bigger cars with all the tweets and whistles. And for the kids, well, they needed a car too so we had to make more and more money.
     We began to neglect family and family time. Yes, we provided more physical things to the kids, far more than we had growing up. We took them on vacations that we never dreamed of. We programmed their entire days and weekends with all sorts of programs and clubs. But we forgot, many of us, to be parents. We had no time for it; too busy making the bucks, indulging our own needs and fantasies.
     Not everybody did this. We all know who and what we did and are. And yes, no one is perfect, but somewhere along the line the values were not passed on, or at least the values which were truly valuable and the need for money, to make it, to be big and bigger, to have 'stuff' - all this took our attention away from the world and what was going on. And when we did pay attention, it was to shout, to threaten and to go away again. Too busy with life were we.
     So the bad element took over the world. We had crooked politicians. We had a time where no matter what one did, if one had connections, then forget about it. So today it is said, or was said to me, that we punish that which is uncovered. Really? Do you believe that? Sure, some were, for the uproar was simply too loud to ignore, but look what goes unpunished, and sorry, Republicans, it falls on your plate. Why is Jim Jordan still in Congress? Were his sexual misdeeds or the overlooking of such so minor? Ask the many wrestlers who suffered abuse because he looked away. And what about Nunes, he who screams of the innocence of Trump and who pushes to  oust Democrats who veered from the straight and narrow. So what is with his misuse of campaign funds to take himself on really nice vacations? Too minor for some? Truly? Or is it that we now have a society where the people in power are the people who can do wrong freely and without consequence and for the rest of the people - well, look out below!!
     And these moral lapses are eating through society at all levels. We hear of crooked CEOs, of heads of HOAs who are destroying their communities. We hear of power hungry minor figures who need to be 'someone" and to hell with everyone else. And we see the cancerous growth of this type of thinking as the world is taken over by dictators and strongmen who think nothing of purging their societies and no, it is not the make believe of the purge movies. We even, G-d help us, have such a person at the head of our own country, a man accused of misdeeds, of moral proclivities that are unspeakable, of mentally deranged behavior, of a lack of intelligence and care and concern for others. He has colluded, either him or those working for him, with the enemy and is still doing that. And yet, why is he still in office. Never before would this have happened. He would have been out on his keister long ago. But today, today the Republicans are moral wimps and creeps, concerned only with remaining in power, such as it is, even as they give it away to him as they refuse to stand up against this harmful thinking and behavior.
     How did this happen? Because we violated a principle rule of education, of improvement. My students always had to do a first draft which they then would read over, correct, improve and sometimes start over again. We did that in life as well, trying out things that were either good or not, valuable or not, and we hope that we chose wisely. But today, there is no first draft, no second draft. It all is hanging out there and  not in a good way.
     Yet there is hope. There are people out there who do care and who take time out of their lives to protest, to write, to call and email, to donate and to vote - TO VOTE! We need not violence, but participation and good thinking. We need a return to caring. We need a return to a world where kids are not thrown into cages. Where people are recognized for the values they can contribute to society. Where religion is not used as an excuse to cut others out, to send them out of the camp of humanity. We need a second draft and soon. Anyone up for the rewrite?