The Glass Is Half Empty

The Glass Is Half Empty

By Alex Saitta

June 29, 2018

Introduction:

Reading this you’ll see one of the primary reasons why I see the glass as half empty looking out the next decade or two. Look at what is being fed to our children and our children are our future.

All The Same:

The past few months we’ve all received the candidate mailers, robo calls and saw the ads on TV. Every candidate said he was the most conservative, will clean up the corruption, is a businessman, the true outsider, 100% pro-life, and is more like President Trump than even Trump himself.

The same conservative buzz words and catchy phrases -- how can this be? Well, most candidates poll the voters on what the voters want. Then during the campaign, the candidates regurgitate back to the voters what they want to hear. It really a snow job; few candidates are truly genuine these days.

Moral Decline:

The economy is growing, most have more money in their pockets and things have improved economically. Looking deeper, however, our country is rotting from the inside out. Yet, none of our leaders want to talk about it. Our country is in a moral free fall — collectively we have lost the sense of right and wrong. This is clear, from the random shootings, the rising suicide and overdose rates, the over-the-top lies in political campaigns, attacks on American traditions, foul mouth Hollywood entertainers and the need for more sensationalism in the news, on TV or in the movies.

How Did We Get Here?

The causes of our moral decline are numerous and debatable, but at the root are two factors: First, the breakdown of the family. As a result, more children are growing up unsupervised or without necessary guidance.

Second, this parental vacuum in many homes has been filled by the media, TV and movies peddling violence, promiscuous sex, four-letter words, gambling, transgenderism, the “just do it” mentality, kill and be killed video games or whatever gets them buzz, ratings, sales or pushes their destructive agenda.

Many children can’t handle these adult issues being thrown at them and are overwhelmed. That manifests itself in poor behavior at school, not reaching their potential, emotional issues that stunt their development, and even suicide. Worse, some become what they have been fed and then act it out, and we’ve seen that with rising bullying or at its extreme, all these shootings.

For decades now, the family breakdown and the media there to fill the void has been a toxic brew that is harming too many developing children and young adults. Is anyone surprised we are now reaping what has been sown?

Here’s an example of a video my wife rented a while ago and I wrote about it at the time. When I say garbage in, garbage out, it is clear who is providing the garbage in.

The movie was centered around a family of four, where the uncle and grandfather had just moved in. The grand-father spewed 4-letter words in front of the seven year old daughter, and targeted them at the dad, mother and uncle Also, he also prided himself on having taught the daughter her talent for an upcoming child beauty queen pageant -- a strip-tease act. The uncle had tried to commit suicide, and explained why at the dinner table (with the teenage son and seven year old daughter sitting right there). You see, he was in a homosexual relationship, and his gay-lover left him for another man, so he slit his wrists. The teenage son wore a shirt that said, “Jesus was Wrong”, he refused to speak to anyone and wrote notes on a pad to communicate, including, “I hate everyone, especially my family”. Of course the dad was portrayed as a loser and non-leader, and generally the parents were the dumbest ones of them all.

The movie received 3 ½ stars by the way from those Hollywood wizards called movie critics.

Extreme Results:

Too many feel, think and act out what they are fed, unfortunately.

You know the names: Dylann Roof who shot up 9 in a Charleston church; Shannon Miles who put 15 slugs into the Texas Deputy in cold blood; James Holmes who plotted, prepared for and killed 12 in a Colorado movie theater; Nikoles Cruz, who killed 17 at Marjory Stoneman High School in Florida. Cruz purposely did not shoot a handful of the students so they could “tell his story”. Tell his story? What story? He was only 19 years old.

Yes, let me add another, telling children they are the center of the universe and inflating their self-esteem. When Cruz grew up and realized he wasn’t the center of the universe, he wasn’t being drenched in awards for just showing up, he felt cheated and he devised a way to make sure his story was told.

While much older, Vester Flanagan, who shot the TV reporter and her cameraman, how he waited for exact moment the live camera was on her before he shot her dead. Then how he sent off a 23-page manifesto and called ABC News while he was on the run, before he killed himself.

And the media or media created notoriety doesn’t have an effect on the behavior of these people?

I’ve reached the conclusion our culture is suffering from a self-perpetuating mental illness. That is, if our society was an individual, I think he would be slapped with some kind of mental diagnosis by now.

Why Is This Not Discussed?

Where is the moral clarity from our leadership that is so desperately needed today? Like I said, this discussion is missing from the political debate. Why? To talk about what is right and wrong today and its root causes, is to judge others, and such judgements cost votes. Politicians want to get elected, so pointing out the moral decline is the last thing our leaders want to talk about. And the media is mum on the subject, profiting from peddling this trash.

If our decline is to be reversed, leadership must emerge from the masses. Those who step up and say, look at what is being fed our children! Look at the result! We must stop this madness!

Postscript:

Huge long lasting events (often negative) tend to put everyone on the same page in terms of morals and values, and pushes them all in the same direction. For instance, the Industrial Revolution,WWI, the Great Depression and WWII instilled winning principles into US citizens, beit fiscal conservationism, Biblical morals and patriotic love for America. For instance, in the 1920’s people borrowed too much money. In the 1930’s there were widespread foreclosures, where people had everything repossessed. If you look at US history, people didn’t start to borrow again until the 1960’s. They didn't start to over-borrow until the 1980's.

My point is that 16 years of branding (for a lack of better word), from 1929 to 1945 got us all thinking and hence moving in the right direction, and as a result the US became the first world superpower by 1955. That is why they are called the Greatest Generation -- those principles, morals and values instilled in them. I never read the book, but like the title and agree with it.

Don’t get me wrong, I love peace and prosperity. However, there is a downside to having 70 years of peace and prosperity. Without such long lasting threats, people tend to drift apart, binding values and principles are lost and the result is division. Such division often stops or slows progress for a nation, like you are seeing in Europe and the US more recently.

Try to hire a millennial. Many simply do not want to work, because they didn't live through the Depression and that work ethic was not instilled into the millennials like it was the Depression babies and their children.