Blog

SHERWOOD FOREST

America has changed. Not in transition, no longer wavering, but clearly and decisively.

A nation who once prided herself on individual exceptionalism has adapted the mantel of mediocrity and found it acceptable. We are becoming a nation where success, education, personal responsibility and individual achievement are viewed with contempt and envy.

We have become a nation who mirrors the petty meanness of the last man standing Reality TV shows we have become so addicted to.

There was once a time, still in recent memory perhaps, where most Americans aspired to be ‘rich’, believed in the American dream to do so, admired their parents’ generation, who had invested in them the same work ethic of personal success they had toiled for their entire lives.

America came to the crossroads sometime in the past thirty years and after a brief respite of prosperity and solidarity, chose the path to Sherwood Forest.

The country’s 11/6 election decisions are not quite so shocking when you consider the tone of the electorate in recent years. The path towards dependency & us vs. them divisiveness and entitlements, has been carefully and systematically enforced through the education system, the media and the very government who pretends to represent all her citizens with equal fervor.

We have become a Robin Hood nation, pitting the ‘rich’ against the poor . Taking from the rich to give to entitlement programs and pay down excessive government debt, we are in danger of killing the goose who lays the golden eggs – it may already be too late in the once great State of California. Penalizing the producers to their peril, the very government who relies on tax extremism, vilifies the very source of those who pay for it all, while burdening them with unprecedented tax increases and regulatory constrictions. One can’t help but wonder what will happen when the producers stop producing.

It is an affront to all to consider a government who has invested heavily and consistently with pitting different stratospheres of Americans against one another. Yes, there is always disparity, and fair or not, America of old believed in the ability of the individual to achieve their own measure of success, no matter what their social or economic status . So instead of the ability to achieve or fail – and failure is the right hand of success – Americans have chosen mediocrity.

With mediocrity comes the ease of excuses, the tendency to settle and become complacent, loss of passion, patriotism, individual will and strength of character. Mediocrity breeds contempt, ill will for the achiever and the subversive expectation that someone else will take care of them.

We are a nation viewed no longer by our solidarity, but by our differing demographics. A nation, despite the ongoing failures of current European economics, deliberately choosing to go down the same path of economic destruction.

There are no simple answers as to how this happened to a once great nation, though I suspect if you read a little history you may see some reoccurring patterns (can you say Roman Empire?). There is even less clarity on how to get us out of the ongoing economic and nationally divided mess we’ve created.

In the meanwhile, half the nation mourns.