The Hounds June Rant - What will it take to wake people up?

Yesterday, I listened to the Monthly Monday Morning Meeting with the Mayor on WHKY's First Talk show as I have done monthly for years. Honestly, I appreciate Hal Row's show and although I haven't been listening live as much over the past few months, because of my job and insomnia, I keep up with the show and the direction that Hal wants to take the show.

I'm not really into critiquing Hal, but I have some thoughts about what I heard on Monday morning and since I do have this forum, I am going to espouse them and I will attempt to do so in a tasteful manner. I would like to preface what I say here by stating that Mayor Wright is entitled to his opinion and even if I don't agree with a few of the things that he stated yesterday, I do appreciate it when he steps forward in a responsible manner and willfully lets us know what he is thinking.

The first issue that the Mayor talked about was his attendance and duties involving Memorial day. I think he was spot on in his statements that more people should attend these services. The public definitely should show reverance to the troops. They do not ask to be put into the situations they are placed in. They are doing their job and fulfilling their duty.

But then, in my opinion, Mayor Wright got off track. He stated that this was the best time to be alive on this earth, because of the strength of the United States of America. He stated that we should be proud of that strength. We should be building on that strength. He stated that this world probably needs a benevolent, powerful leader and he doesn't know who else is going to step up and be benevolent. He stated that our soldiers make the rest of the world know that we are the ones that have to be accounted to.

As I stated, I do believe that we should stand 100% behind our troops, but is our government doing that? I believed in the so called War on Terror, when I thought it was going to be fought to be won. In my opinion, the intentions were never meant to make this nation and our forces occupiers or to enforce our ideals on anyone else. We cannot afford to have a mindset such as that. We have been in these battles for nearly a decade with no end in sight and somewhere along the way we have moved towards governance through the ideals of an Empire instead of as a Republic.

What do I mean by this? George Washington, in his farewell address to the American people urged the nation to avoid attachments and entanglements in foreign affairs. Have we followed this advice? No, We have for years used covert and overt operations to try to manipulate and control other governments for the benefit of a few multinational corporate oligarchs.

This has nothing to do with the troops. This involves politicians who have usurped the authority granted to the government by the constitution. These politicians have been all to willing to be bought off by the corporatists who are really in control of this nation.

If you think that I am being unpatriotic by making these assertions, then maybe you should go back and listen to what President Dwight Eisenhower said in his farewell address in 1961, when addressing The Military Industrial Complex.

Too many people just fall in line with the mainstream media's coverage of these wars. Everyone has fallen into a context of thought that these wars are like sporting events -- Good Guys versus Bad Guys. The questions must be asked about purpose and intent and whether those original purposes and intentions are being fulfilled.

These wars are a culmination of historical events that have developed since the beginning of man's existence on this planet. Is it unreasonable to look at the reasoning behind these wars. Is it wrong to project the future? Is it wrong to demand accountability from our government pertaining to the direction and goals set forth involving these military issues?

I don't think it is good that we try to become benevolent dictators of world policies. We can never permanently enforce these actions. No empire has ever been able to enforce the type of control necessary to maintain the empire. You can't do it militarily, you can't do it motivationally, you can't do it mentally, and you can't do it monetarily. So, what is the endgame? Have we bitten off more than we can chew?

These are clearly not the best times in the history of mankind. The 1990s were the zenith of the United States, but what we have seen is that the Wizards behind the curtain were manipulating perception by cooking the government and corporate books, selling the public on the idea that overconsumption was good, and instituting policies that allowed people to overexpand their credit through cheap money (low interest rates).

The fat created from the bubble economy of the late 1990s' dot.com bubble allowed the people of this country to live in denial for a decade about the true health of this nation's finances. The average person in this country is still unaware of what is going on and has chosen to remain fat, dumb, and happy. They still think that this is a normal business cycle recession and everything is going to come back. Really, has the average person ever been aware? These people are acting as a burdensome anchor that is preventing us from moving towards recovery.

U.S debt to rise to $19.6 trillion by 2015 - Reporting by Donna Smith; Editing by Kenneth Barry - Tue Jun 8, 2010 6:19pm EDT WASHINGTON June 8 (Reuters) - The U.S. debt will top $13.6 trillion this year and climb to an estimated $19.6 trillion by 2015, according to a Treasury Department report to Congress.

At the end of Hal's radio show, he talked about how it was good to discuss some of the positive things going on in our community. I will talk about some of the other issues that were discussed on this radio show over the next couple days, but I'll be honest, I didn't hear anything positive mentioned during that show. Maybe it was because the Mayor makes Hal feel warm and fuzzy, but there wasn't any good news on the City's Budget of Austerity, which was the other main point of topic.

I think we have got to get real. The economy is not turning around. What are you pointing to, if you are going to state that?

The worst problem we have in this community is that the people in this community don't care about the world that surrounds them and the actions of our local leaders show that they don't want these people to wake up and they don't want to take any steps that would make the local government more accessible to the people. They want to horde and control the decision making process and I don't think they have any contextual understanding of the world outside of their small group, and what they slurp up on the Boob Tube and a few mainstream periodicals.

I want you to look below at the map of the last 500 people that have looked at this blog. There are as many people looking at it who reside outside the vicinity of this region as those who live here. I think that speaks volumes about what this community is facing and its biggest liability.

I have people that talk to me all of the time about the issues that this community faces, but they don't want to get involved. I have been informed of what I consider unethical conduct taking place, but no one wants to step forward to ask pertinent questions and demand accountable answers. There are a handful of us that care and ask questions, but we are ignored, because the majority of the public and the local press don't care about openness and accountability. The public and the local press go along to get along.

I'm not here to talk about American Idol or Dancing with the Stars or Sports. I am here to talk about the reality of issues that have a true bearing on your life. And I hear the following statements alot from people. "That doesn't affect me." "I can't do anything about that." "That's the way its always been"... And the frog continues to boil.

People talk about how they want someone to step up and do the right thing and look out for the people's interest and not the power's interest; but we step forward and get abandoned by the sloths who in the end support the status quo of continually reduced expectations.

People keep thinking that we've hit rock bottom and this is as bad as it gets. They don't think that things can go down from here. They think it is impossible that this country could become a full blown Totalitarian Government or that we could be militarily invaded and we could be occupied by foreign nationals. We could become a Third World Country like these countries you see on the television. What we have learned from the history of the world is that none of this is impossible.

How long has this thinking that we have hit rock bottom been going on? It seems, as long as the check is coming in the mail, then the people don't care that the governments surrounding them are getting in a continually worse financial bind. Will it take the end of these social welfare programs for people? And will it be too late then? What will it take to wake people up?