In Case You Haven't Noticed

I believe there are too many people, mainly those in their forties, and it goes without saying that my assumption will include all of those below forty, who don’t know what is going on in the world. Those of you who are thirty and below probably have a life that revolves around a cell-phone and the twitter-verse. With that statement you might think I am knowledgeable about those two pieces of technology. I’m not. I have a cell phone that I only use as a phone, and I don’t twitter and seldom fritter. I make this blanket statement about global knowledge because our society and especially our younger members seem to be caught up in personal issues, or “how does it affect me?” Those between thirty and forty are in the prime earning years and all they pay attention to is their job, their workplace, and networking with a possible new employer.  Somewhat understandable, but limiting.

People listen to their own personal music while they work, drive, or exercise. They tweet to other twitterers (if that is actually a word, it should be shortened to just twits because it is appropriate) every time they take a step, as if their life is that important to others. In short, they have tuned out the world and tuned in to themselves. Well, they need to come up for air and look around because things are happening.

First of all, we have a president who is into the same “me” stuff that I have described above. He appears bored by his elected office and appears to be just waiting out his time on the job until he and the wife can retire and then rake in millions on the speaking circuit and still enjoy much of life on our dollar. While he rocks back and relaxes, the Middle East is in turmoil. I can no longer keep track of the various radical Islamist factions who hate the United States. ISIS, those fun-loving junior varsity guys with sharp knives have risen to the top of the Islamist cesspool for the moment while Russia, with Mad-Vlad Putin at the helm actively assaults Ukraine with weaponry and stealthily attacks all of Europe with natural gas pipelines. Did you know that 75% of natural gas in Europe and almost 90% of natural gas to Eastern Europe is piped in from Russia? Our allies’ economies are in the hands of our major threat.  To the east, China flexes some newfound muscle at sea and forcefully replaces the adherents to the prior political regime so that Xi Jinping will have a new leadership team that is only loyal to him. Hong Kong is being pulled closer into the Chinese mainstream as they are being forced to abandon plans to have an open nomination for their new leader. Beijing believes it would be too chaotic.

Internally, we have our usual suspects of issues:  illegal immigration, race relations, presidential rule by fiat, higher welfare roles, joblessness, and various scandals by Obama’s cast of clowns. The list could go on and on.

All of this is brought up to demonstrate that we are bringing up a large segment of our society that has tuned out external stimuli that they don’t want to know about. We are willfully ignorant of important occurrences and situations that will affect us sooner than later. There are many things in life more important than a playlist or the latest app and cell phone. There are certainly more important issues than a bunch of Hollywood A-Listers who cavorted around without clothes and had the poor judgment to take a snapshot of their stupidity. Good grief!