2/3/99
wswartz@psouth.net
Last night, for the first time in a long time, I watched the
evening news on one of the major networks, I think it was NBC.
They covered three major stories, the first being corruption in
the Olympic "village," the second had to do with the
inability of the US Armed Forces to man the hardware it owns
(planes, ships etc.) and the third was about Senate trial of the
leader of the free world. (I'm getting so I can't stand to put
his name on paper)
It dawned on me that all three were related by one common
underlying element, to wit: the "baby boomers" are
truly now inhabiting the seats of power in our culture and their
complete lack of a value system of any kind, for which I blame my
own generation, has come back to haunt us, and big time.
For reasons that are not all clear to me, the bumper crop of
babies generated when our troops came home from the WW 2 (the
"big one"), those who reached maturity during the
Vietnam era, did not inherit a value system of any kind from
their parents.
They were, in the view of many of my generation, spoiled rotten.
This is the generation that burned draft cards and rioted on
campuses and in the streets all over the nation rather than fight
for their country, as their parents had. This is the generation
of free love, flower power, and gatherings, ostensibly to listen
to music, but in reality, for uninhibited access to drugs of all
kinds, and don't try to tell me any different, I attended some of
these so-called "concerts" myself! Most of the
attendees were so blasted out of their minds they didn't even
know where the stage was, who the performers were, let alone what
the crap was that was coming over the loudspeakers! Well, these
people are now in the driver's seat, and as noted in the first
paragraph, it "ain't pretty."
Last night's evening new revealed that the Olympics, an
institution that began in ancient Greece, before the time of
Christ and is therefore well over 2000 years old, has now been
corrupted for the very first time.
Not only are the athletes, who apparently are, and have been,
cheating for quite some time now through the use of performance
enhancing drugs (there's that word again), but it turns out that
those in charge, the people at the very top of the dung heap,
have been cheating also, through bribery, influence peddling and
a variety of other money grubbing tactics! Can you imagine that?
The Olympics, paradigm of all that's right and honorable, are
corrupt, and it took the over 2000 years for that to happen. And
who is now in charge? Baby boomers, that's who.
The next story on the evening news was about the fact that the
USN, ruler of the world's oceans, can no longer man it's ships! A
carrier in the Arabian Gulf is (400) men short. They do not even
have enough pilots to fly their assigned missions, a fate shared
by the US Air Force, and the Army is in even worse shape. Skilled
people are leaving the service in droves.
Well guess what? They may have been able to figure out that they
are being held to a higher standard than their boss, the
"Commander in Chief," who once said (in writing) the he
"loathes the military." Their "Commander in
Chief?" What a joke and morale booster that must be.
Not a week goes by that top officers are not disciplined, their
careers ruined, even cashiered, for far less serious offenses
than those committed by their boss. Imagine what would happen to
any military man, officer or not, caught getting a "bj' from
a subordinate right on their duty station? I'll let you tell me
what would happen to him!
And can you believe that the guy at the top of national heap even
had the nerve to issue a "gag" order mandating that
severe discipline would be meted out to anyone who dared to speak
ill of he who sits (or kneels, or lays, as conditions warrant) in
the Oval Office? Is it any wonder skilled people would rather
leave than see the institutions they have been trained to lay
their lives down for dragged through the slime?
Last, the nation sits transfixed as the mainstream media and
Democrat members of that "August Deliberative Body,"
the US Senate, support to the death, strictly for political
reasons, a man who has committed acts that would result in job
loss, even prison, for anyone else, without exception, in the
fields of business, industry, commerce, academia, or the
aforementioned military.
Consider for one moment that last year the fed forced Mitsubishi
Motor Co. to pay huge fines and fire dozens of employees, salary
and hourly, to settle a sexual harassment case that hinged on the
fact that Mitsubishi allowed, or at least did nothing to stop,
suggestive photographs of females being hung around a plant they
operated?
This is the kind of nutty stuff that happens when people, devoid
of values or standards of any kind, get to drive the bus.