Sunday's Rant

                           Sunday’s Rant

         Some day’s there just ought to be “someone to see about what is going on.” Like, how do we deal with that megalomaniac child-emperor, with the bad haircut, in North Korea. If he didn’t have an army so large, and some nuclear toys, he would be laughed off the international stage.

       And what about the oil companies gouging an entire nation (USA) because of some temporary refinery shut downs, after the Hurricane Harvey” disaster in Houston? Who lets them get away with this horrendous profiteering in a national emergency? In other countries, all of the oil company execs would receive at least a public remonstrance from national officials. Here, we just smile and say “oh those bad oil company types.” No wonder they act so rapaciously in times of a national disaster.

       And of course, we view and are appalled by the national buffoonery that is the daily behavior of our elected officials in Washington D.C.. They can’t fix health care, they don’t want to mess with the very difficult problem of immigration. Stop gap measures only hurt all potential American citizens and offend even our most fervid allies, like the good-natured Canadians to our North.

       A proposed new tax policy? I can see where this one is going, the rich will get more breaks and the middle classes and working poor will take it on the chin like they always do. Isn’t there someone we can see about that? There ought to be a Bastille around someplace that needs storming.

      The roads, bridges and critical infrastructure of this country are a disgrace. Doesn’t anyone have any national pride anymore? We will be leaving the following generations a broken-down wreck of a nation that is so far in debt that their great grandchildren will be paying for our sins. What kind of a legacy is that?

      Perhaps the rising seas, that we so patently ignore, will cover entire shorelines and hide much of what needs fixing? What doesn’t get seen, doesn’t get fixed. Maybe we should all take up fiddling while the place falls down around our ears? That supposedly worked for the Roman Emperor Nero.

       Do I have your attention? If so, you are among a very small crowd of caring people that actually gives a damn about is happening to our nation. Everyone else appears to like watching the daily arena games, on television, like the gladiator games of ancient Rome. Maybe that is why the movie “ The Hunger Games” did so well at the box office? Who speared whom today, with critical and empty rhetoric? Score one point for those topped by perfect hundred-dollar haircuts and clad in $1,000 dollar suits. Most of us by our stuff at J.C. Penny’s and Target.

      I certainly don’t profess to have the very complicated solutions that are necessary to address the problems mentioned. And these are only the most pressing of a very long list. But, that is what we send representatives to our state and national capitols to figure out. The good Lord knows that we pay them well enough and give them enough staff to at least begin to tackle the mess that we are in. When are they going to take up the challenge? “Manana,” is a popular phrase in Latin America. Literally, it means “tomorrow,” but in practice it means “I will get to it some other day in the near future.”  And maybe things will get better all by themselves? Ai, carramba !

      Would that an occasional rant would have some effect on the problems that ail us. I know that it does not. Perhaps, this old war-horse (me) might have to come out of retirement and take up the lance again, to charge “once more into the breech.”

      Enough of the empty, partisan Washington,  rhetoric ! There is an old street aphorism that is applicable here. “Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way!”

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                             (661 words)

                     Joseph Xavier Martin