Since the Viet Nam era I've become more and more concerned with the lack of honesty and integrity in the media. I'm also concerned about popular culture, civil society and political discourse. It seems the idea of serving the public good has been transformed to one of creating personal wealth at the expense of the citizen. This is not what our founder's envisioned. Concerned citizens were to leave their business behind and serve the public for a few years and then return to their private lives. Now we have career politicians who rarely leave office and continue to build a fortune that allows them to live like princes. Why aren't the excesses of these poltroons the subject of daily ridicule in the major paper's? Put simply, it is active collusion between pols and reporter's that result in the press printing what they're told rather than doing the shovel and pick work required of honest journalist's.
I know the popular meme these days is one of narrative journalism. This means that the story doesn't have to be factually correct as long as the sentiment is politically correct. And so long as reporter's identify politically with the pols they report on, change is not likely. If Vice_President Cheney had been half the gaffe machine Biden is it would have been reported daily. I simply can't understand how we've gotten to this point. Let me rephrase that; I know how we got here, I guess I don't understand why we've let things deteriorate to this point.
Part of the reason I've started this blog is to help me make sense of the change in our society over the past several decade's. I grew up in a culture so different from what I see today that it's like being Rip Van Winkle: I've laid down to take a nap and awoken in Bizzaro World. While growing up in Arkansas I learned about firearms; how to shoot and when. I also learned to treat people with respect, to believe in God, to seek knowledge for it's own sake, work hard and not expect anything from any one else. And that this country was the last, best hope for the free world.These moral and ethical lessons left me with set of instructions that could be relied on. They might not have been specific to every situation but the rules could be used to figure out the difficult decision's that had to be made. I don't remember who said it but I've heard this for years. There are three types of people in the world: sheep, wolves, and sheep dogs. Being ex-military and coming from a legacy of military volunteer's, I know that I'm a sheep dog. My religion and my 60-plus years of life have informed my view of good and evil. I can tell the sheep from the wolves. I knew where my duty lay when I enlisted and I know where duty lies today. If I can convince one person to believe there are things worth fighting for, I will consider this effort a success.