You Want Sugar in That?

Today, as in previous days, Americans are having ‘Tea Parties.” No, there is very little if any actual tea in these “parties,” rather they are waving around the same type of flags as were waved in America during the 1770s screaming to our spend-happy government, “Don’t tread on us.” Though I am very happy that no one is really having their life threatened because of this I wonder if the violence of the first Bostonian Tea Party was the main reason it succeeded. American’s are not what we use to be, that is for sure. For better, maybe for worse, but there is no tenacity, there is no resilience, just a whole lot of couch-shouting laziness. “But they are outside and it is raining!” That is exactly how it was some days during our Civil War . . . except they were being shot and they were starving and they did not have real homes to drive back to or new cloths to jump into. I am not at all trying to compare our Tea Parties with the Civil War but I am trying to convey that we are not them, we have a great heritage of Americans behind us but that does not automatically make us great.

Yesterday I was looking at another country whose government was being protested. Thailand is an aesthetically beautiful country but it‘s government is not. People protest against the government and they get killed. This is no rarity as far as the rest of the world is concerned, governments in the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Asian Regions all tout oppressive and aggressive governments. I am therefore aware of how nice it is to be able to go down to the Capital, say mean things to important people, and then go back home. But what would you do if this was not so? What if the American government started “sacking” people because they said something about the government that the government did not like? Friend, the reality of life is that nothing will stand forever, not even a fantastic government. Is your hope in the land that you live in, the people around you, the government over you? I know often my hope is, but think what a silly hope this is. Can the government save you from all diseases, they cannot save anyone from cancer. “But I know people who have gotten medical care” and that is a very helpful thing, but the government can only act as an aide, they cannot themselves go in and cure every one of its citizens, it is limited and it should be. There is only so much a government can do. Why put your hope in something else that has its own hands untied and yet is still unable to save and provide?

Yes, protest the buggers who are throwing money in the fire of their greed, but know that all the social change in the world cannot protect you from life, death, or eternity.