You have to wonder some days. How would today's U.S. citizenry really handle a serious threat to the U.S. I don't mean the global war on terror. The last time I looked al Qaeda doesn't have aircraft carriers and hasn't invaded American held territory or attacked American bases all over the world with modern machines of war. I guess I'm referring to World War II in some ways and what has been called the "Greatest Generation"--a term I'm not all that sure I buy into. After all, you have to think the generation that founded this nation was pretty special. You have to think the generation of those who fought for and won civil rights improvements (change is slow and still moving) were made of special stock as well.
No, I'm talking about how in today's America we are perfectly willing to send sons and daughters off to face death and scream about how much we are sacrificing in taxes. We are willing to send young people off to fight while taking a tax cut for ourselves so we can hand them the tab when they come back from watching their friends be killed or maimed in war. We are truly the "I got mine nation" and, more importantly, we are the "I got mine now can I have a little more of yours" generation. All we have to do is look to Wall Street where banks took taxpayer bailouts and turned around and spent the money on lobbyists to keep Congress from passing more restrictive rules on banking. And it's inescapable to say they used taxpayer dollars because they told us that they had no money, so the money they have to spend obviously is coming from the taxpayers. Or they all lied when they took TARP money. Which one do you think they're willing to admit to--misfeasance or malfeasance?
I'm looking over the posters for World War I and World War II
and seeing that Americans in those days were willing to sacrifice for each other. Gas rationing, food rationing, growing victory gardens, not having new cars to buy. And now we have politicians telling us to go out and buy stuff in the days after the attacks on the World Trade Center as it's our patriotic duty to keep those wheels of commerce turning. This is what President Eisenhower was warning us about. I'm thinking Ike would be none too amused at his Republican Party these days. Nor do I think he'd find much to say about the nation that has turned it's back on the veterans who stormed Normandy in D-Day and who later turned around and fought in hellish conditions in Korea. Not to mention the ones who went to Vietnam and the ones who are coming back badly broken from recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are unwilling to pay for the wars, so it's a safe bet we will be unwilling to pay to take care of all of those who have survived this war who would have been dead from their wounds in past conflicts.
So, as Christmas draws near and we think about ultimate sacrifice, the question looms--have you tried not thinking about yourself for a few minutes today?
music when Amy told me to come to the window as the hawk had returned to sit outside our back door. But before I could even cross the room, The Cooper's Hawk had swooped from it's perch in a winter-denuded tree and grabbed up its supper of a European sparrow from the top of the hedgerow in the yard next door. Winter is a hungry desperate time outdoors even in Georgia where we think it's a mild climate. Now if that hawk would just work on the squirrel population a bit ...
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