"The Good Old Days" in America?

                      “The Good Old Days” in America?

Stop building the Mosque in New York City. Persons different than me scare me; I hate them and want to hurt them. Ignore his birth certificate; the President is not an American. I pay the media to lie; ignorant people accept my lies; so, it pays to lie. We still practice school segregation in the South, probably throughout the nation. Power and profit are the American dream. Just say, “No” no matter how it hurts people in need. We used to be one country like one family, but the past is the past. Pledge allegiance to the soft underbelly of the United States.

We are living in times when our words and actions expose our collective values and personal identities like mirrors reflect a country or us as individuals. It is reasonable to say that these reflections let us and others see our morals, wisdom and ignorance, as well as, our love and hate measured by living lives of good, bad, and evil.

While this is true, we still have a clash of denial and blame. Are we living in a world of change energized by conflicts between good and evil? First, the word evil must be understood because so many of us claiming to be good, truthful, loyal, and patriotic do many cruel, destructive acts perpetrating pain and trauma that are bad or evil by definition. If that is evil, then what is good?

Another way to understand what good, bad, and evil are is to begin by asking ourselves, “What would Jesus Christ say or do in this moment of decision and action?” God’s words and behaviors essentially would be good; in other words, loving, compassionate, and charitable. This is what He said and did two-thousand years ago and what the Holy Spirit is saying and doing today. There should be no confusion about this because His words and actions were and must still be the same as the Eternal taught us in the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule, the Our Father, as well as, other lessons and modeling found in the Scriptures and many of the Apocrypha. This means that if our living is not loving, compassionate, or charitable, we are not living as God directed; therefore, how we live is not good. Of course, what we say and do may be a combination of good and bad, which is to be sorted out at our final harvest. So, what is this good, bad, or evil construct? Perhaps, bad acts are destructive mistakes requiring justification by their correction and our remorse. If what we do and say are clearly bad with no good in them, executed definitely or tentatively, and are meant to be destructive and painful to others with no intent for redress and remorse, they are evil.

Consider the reality of what we do knowingly, speaking and acting in opposition to the way Jesus lived and directed us to live. Examples of this in today’s cultures being expressed by our words and behaviors could include: giving to the rich at the expense of the poor, meek, and mild; spreading hate instead of being peacemakers in search of justice; defying His telling us to be innocent and trusting like, “these little ones” as Jesus presented children who will inherit heaven, warning anyone who would harm “these little ones” by such as, neglect, deceit, attacks of terror, shock and awe, and depriving them food or healing. He said that what you do to the least of my people, you do to Me.

Where does one begin to reexamine our individual and collective motivations and behaviors recognizing that such a list would be very long and common including: war, starvation and torture, performing evil to increase power and profit for the rich, man’s part in destroying the earth by global warming and contamination, as well as, personal abuse and trauma driven by ignorance and hate. What a short list this is when considering all the chaos, the pain, and the stench of evil that we create and must breathe in every moment of every day.

Oh, for “the good old days”! This saying is expressed by some in a sigh with feelings like those belonging in a dream, or a desire for those times that were so pleasing we hold on to them dearly, these revered memories. Then there are other meanings for the good old days that are more pragmatic sighs coming out of phenomenological fatigue, particularly if we think about current conditions of bad and evil as just another place or period in a historical continuum. We must continue to long for “the good old days” and protect those special moments of sharing and happiness, and not give into the belief that life must consist of continual conflict and senseless stress.

From a historical perspective, were there ever times without war, tolerated abuse perpetrated by one or more humans or their institutions directed at other humans and their institutions? Does any young or old adult remember times without wars, domestic and community violence, financial, ethnic or class conflict? Were there ever universal good old days except those times and relationships that were set like diamonds in human settings of intimacy?

These are depressing polemics. We humans, our understanding and wisdom, or to the contrary our ignorance and hate are in constant change. Nothing is fixed in the physical universe or psychological and spiritual reality except for love and compassion. The inverse to thinking and behaving contrary to loving and being compassionate creates ever growing realities of conflict.

Our emotions can easily become enmeshed in the continuum of hate and evil, which can cause us to forget how it truly was in “the good old days”. There are so many things to overwhelm us today that, when looked at closely, are the same troubles man has created over and over again over millennia that blind our minds to wondrous moments of togetherness and peace. They can remain ours to live, but not passively. Those special moments of “the good old days” truly existed during marriages, births and other intimacies in our collective family lives. They are made to come alive in us and our brothers and sisters through love and compassion. Ah, but what about this world of ours full of hate and evil? We must knowingly resist its decadence by awareness through the grace of God.

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Veterans Thrown Away

In the USA now and for many years, veterans or veterans to be, now on active duty having served many tours of combat regardless of their branch of service, regulars, reservists, or National Guard, in combat or awaiting orders to ship out are frequently treated as assets, but expendables or a drain on our capital resources that contribute to the national debt.

Too often in the halls of Congress and countless board rooms all over the country, veterans are considered to be numbers. You can hear, “How many do we need; what will it cost to train and outfit them; where’s the funding coming from?” Often the politically correct response is, “The treasury has more than enough money to cover this budget line item, and besides, it is our policy whether realistic or not requires that we support these numbers, our troops. This is the USA; we’re Americans, people who do not accept defeat; therefore, we must win even though the criteria for winning or an outcome signifying success is not clear. So, keep saying we must support our troops, the brave men and women many of whom, if they survive, will be old enough to drink in a few short years.

Also, in the halls of Congress and countless board rooms, lobbyists from profiteering corporations are executing their duties to company shareholders, ‘negotiating’ or possibly pressuring law-makers to pass this amendment or filibuster that amendment. Interestingly, some of these lobbyists may be wasting their time and money when you consider that many of our elected officials just say ‘no’ to legislation that is needed by veterans and their families if doing so is politically self-serving.

What I have just said about self-serving no-sayers, may resonate in our heads for a while, because it sounds like what we heard during recent voting for health care to keep citizens alive while trying to reduce their pain; creating jobs; preventing home foreclosures; protecting our families from toxic chemicals; and educating our young people. There should be signs posted at Congressional doors stating, “Get out of the way, or risk being trampled on by more hungry, less fortunate countries that are educating themselves and working in ways that could make America a second or third class nation.”

Our little life boats are awash with political polemics, deceit and manipulative word games forever being foisted on “we the people”. The media bombard us with deceptive ads while journalists rant on assuming we are gullible, naïve, hateful, and somewhat dimwitted. Could this be true? Many of the groups paying for this media mania have been known to lie. Well now, could this be true? Can any of us believe that our own elected officials and corporations from here and abroad would lie? It seems that lying and financial abuse have been justified by the Supreme Court’s decision stating that corporations have the same rights as us truly human citizens; thereby, allowing them to spend all the money they want to continue controlling our elected officials.

Maybe it is futile; however, let me point out to the emerging clans of Constitutionalists that they need not worry about our government becoming socialistic; too late. The Government has been performing in socialist ways even as the Constitution was being written, and we’re still here. Actually, what should be pointed out is really scary. There is a hidden government in the USA. Remember the maxim, “Those who control the purse strings control the government?” The corporations, mostly the for-power-and-profit, multi-national corporations control things, which means governing those who govern our country. Just look at so many energy, financial, munitions, and insurance companies to mention only a few corporate groups that effectively do what they want whether legal, moral or otherwise, making sure that a privileged few get what is to me obscene rewards for their managerial misdeeds.

A few weeks ago, I e-mailed President Obama having heard he announced that our country will finally provide therapy for all veterans suffering from PTSD. He pointed out that the VA can no longer deny veterans treatment they so courageously earned. He underscored what any real and competent psychotherapist should already know that a person can suffer PTSD and other dissociative disorders by observing and experiencing trauma without having his or her own guts blown out. I am a recently retired psychotherapist having practiced for over thirty years, most of the time working with victims of domestic, community, and combat trauma.

For many of those years, I would get word-of-mouth referrals from chronically abused and traumatized victims, some of whom had been seen and released often worse off than when they first went to veteran’s hospitals expecting to receive competent help they desperately needed. A few years ago, I experienced that the VA in the region of my practice had hired therapists that could do this work. So, I assumed the same therapeutic credentials would be required throughout the VA community across the country. Recent data and the President’s statement tell me that I was very mistaken about our veterans receiving the help, the bill for which they so dearly paid. They did their jobs even when many jobs they were given were unjustifiable, certainly misguided. Tell us, you in your Congressional halls and you in your board rooms, why you don’t meet our troops lying in their boxes on airport tarmacs, visit the wounded in hospitals, and make certain that those making intake diagnoses, conducting therapy, and are responsible for providing follow-up care make sure veterans and their families get proper support .

I have heard PTSD used as the latest buzz word in the media. Often it is used incorrectly, as are many other physical-emotional disorders. What has been reported is that the VA or people funding therapy have been making wounded veterans prove that they are so traumatized. Get real! By the nature of dissociative and other disorders, the brain’s survival defense reactions to experiencing trauma are to neurologically bury the damned experience. How can anyone who was put in the decision chain expect traumatized victims to prove what their minds are physically, emotionally, and visually burying? Those responsible for this demand should prove they have the ability, not to mention any right, to keep their jobs. Can we ask a veteran who had his buddy torn apart before his or her eyes, or a little child who has been sexually abused by a family member, a big, bad adult who was supposed to be trusted, prove they have buried experiences that their minds naturally hid at the time and place of the event? Come on prove it. How ridiculous!

I discuss trauma to veterans, children and vulnerable adults in depth in my book “How the Family Goes, So Goes Everything; It Is Up to Us”. It is available from Amazon, as well as, other distributers and websites. I am somewhat reluctant to mention my book at this time, but the whole subject of chronic abuse and trauma, how victims can reconstruct their lives, become happy, and have healthy relationships is greatly misunderstood. This must be changed.

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