This world has changed, and the U.S. has changed in ways that nobody would have ever predicted. The U.S. of the last century is long, long gone, and we, as a people and culture have, for the most part, abandoned our regard for other people.
A few days ago, I sat in an upscale eating establish I like to call The Calorie Factory eating a corn dog with mustard and drinking a Coke. A father approached with twin six-year-old girls, and he sat them in two seats next to me. He ordered a beer and ordered them cheesecakes. At no time did he interact with them, rather, he was busy tweeting and facebooking the entire time. I thought weekend warrior/ father time going on. Then the mother walked up tweeting while bumping into me and everything around her. Father and Mother started tweeting each other from 16 inches apart over the heads of the two attention starved girls. This made me sad and mad.
A friend via AllHumanity approached me last month and stated he was ready to end his life. After I reasoned with him for a couple days, I suggested that he see professional help. I then hooked him up with a doctor in Washington D.C. who agreed to talk to him. When it came time to exchange e-mails, the doctor stated that he would not see this man because his insurance was not one that he preferred to carry; therefore, he should go to an emergency room and get the "luck of the draw" on-shift doctor.
Human kindness has gone straight out the window between each other here in the U.S. People have traded in their manners for iPhones and their character for social networks. It is permitted now to make up a personality for exchanging words on the Internet that has absolutely no truth in reality. In fact, it is encouraged with certain online networks. It is permissible to write lies and slander about people from behind a keyboard and publish it willy-nilly in attempts to destroy others. It is perfectly ok to buy anything you want online and then end innocent lives without regard for others. When did this happen? Who did this?
What has happened to us when people of faith attack each other more than those who have no belief in a God? The churches are full of people who sit right, speak right, walk right, dress right and every other "right" there is to do right. Yet, when faced with a real size problem, they revert to, no disrespect to Borneo, the acts of natives... cannibals. I have seen wild animals with a code of respect that many times is superior to some of those folks.
In a world where supposed character and financial responsibility defined the average Joe the Plumber, our country itself carries trillions of debt with no real plan to pay it back. This country has become morally bankrupt while becoming financially bankrupt; however, on any given Sunday, one can pull up a seat and listen to "talking heads" spin their story for a network audience. This president did this and this guy did that. If we just put this back, borrow from Paul to not pay Peter, we can also sit in the big White House or even better, talk trash about the people sitting in the big White House.
This same system financially destroys anyone who does not match their model (Credit Scores etc). Let me get this correct, the people who destroy others and who stand at the gates of the system are themselves trillions and trillions in debt and have no idea how to pay their bills. Our system is broken because we are broken. We are broken because we have been sold a bill of goods that was "made-up." We knew not how to run it after we made it. We did know that the system we came from was unfair and too heavily governed and taxed. Really?