DID WE RUN OUT OF WHISTLES?

HAS TIME RUN OUT?

More Americans are sounding off about more things than ever before. But, have things reached the point where the sounding off is more of a jarring cacophony than a stirring rallying cry? We pit one cause or one whine against another instead of looking up and noticing that maybe we're all right! Or, maybe are we all destined to lose in the long run? Politicians, aided by behind-the-scenes handlers of all kinds, are quite nimbly playing one faction against another, depending on the time and place. They seize opportunities to appeal to a group that quite likely won't see the evening news the following day when the appeals and the scripts change just enough to lock in a different group, while still claiming to be representing the best choice for everyone's future.

What is our future? Do we know? Do we even know what our "present" is? It's the latter that may be the most important question.

In more of the inevitable clearing out, and thinking of thoughts together for a new column, it was a real shock to pull up a copy of something I wrote for a Guest Viewpoint for our small local monthly paper in April 1996. Twelve years ago !! What went around then has come around even more jarringly today. How many concerns have done anything except get worse in the meantime? The title of the Viewpoint then was: "Who'll Blow The Whistles Before The Time Runs Out?" -- which explains the headline above this column, twelve years later.

Have things improved or only gotten more in need of concentrated whistle-blowing? What do you think?

April 1996:

WHO'LL BLOW THE WHISTLES BEFORE THE TIME RUNS OUT?

America worked itself into a frenzy of viewing everything as a do-or-die marathon, never noticing effects on society or individuals. It’s become a game where money replaces common sense and effort--from qualifying entry level to winner-take-all finale. Now, when stakes are the highest and individuals are coerced into ‘stakeholder” status, the rules rapidly change; but too few people are spotlighting details.

It’s tempting to compare this to an Old West movie, where a gullible stranger loses his wallet, jewelry, horse, ranch, and possibly his very life-- because he mistakenly assumes the game is honest. Today the stakes are higher. We ALL have more to lose than gullible Old West strangers

What will it take before Americans notice that someone has chipped in their ranches and their lives for them? What will it take for Americans to knuckle down, pucker up and blow a deafening chorus of America-saving whistles? Our freedoms HAVE ALREADY BEEN added to the ante and we haven’t read the rules yet.

We’ve remained silent past every over-expansion of one economic sector and profession after another. We’ve watched the over-building; the merging; the dismantling. We accepted all tossing aside, plowing under, profit-taking course reversals, and downsizing. And yet we line up to be silent partners in the next wallet-cleaning, freedom-limiting enterprise with cards and rules courtesy of the same experts who ran the preceding games.

Worse than the over-expansions, have been the sellouts, the liquidations and the demolition of viable properties and businesses. Smaller enterprises and activities went down too -- for having had the audacity to try to compete while forcibly financing experts who ran them out of business. Main Streets and their inhabitants subsist on diminishing crumbs, just as bills for the “economic incentives” come due. Budget totals go up, never down. Only the sizes of the increases are currently negotiable.

How many past frenzies have we watched? Autos, appliances, sports teams and arenas, newspapers, railroads, apartment complexes, retail chains. discounters, hotels, motels, urban renewal. parking ramps, strip malls, stockbrokers, lawyers, doctors, realtors, theme parks, entertainment, subcontractors for corporation giants, insurance cartels. Surprise, surprise! Your money was in all of them.

We didn’t comprehend the overexpansion of caring-and-sharing professions and charities. We financed third-party payments, capital improvements, fundraisers, business “grants,” tax abatements, and finagled donations. Main Street crunched and sacrificed to accommodate complexes, campuses, offices and staffs. Now over-indulged, third-party-financed institutions justify their existences AND THEIR PLANNED EXPANSIONS by claiming THEY bring much needed infusions of money to communities! Who plays and who pays?

Heart-stopping final frenzies are on the horizon. Banks, food industries, schools and government are on the table. All have already buried demands, control mechanisms and taxing advantages in current or pending legislation. Their over-expansion plans will affect your lives, your careers, your finances AND those of your children and grandchildren, Goals 2000, HR1617, HR2332. School-to-Work programs, HR 2202, S269 and executive orders move briskly, little noticed because of joint complicity of agenda pushers, profiteers, lawmakers and media. It’s 11 p.m. Do you know where your whistles are? Can you remember how to blow?

Now, back to July 2008. Updated news, much of it (too much of it ! ) now including foreign intrusions into our lives and our economy. Homes, credit card debt, energy and state and national infrastructure have been added to the earlier frenzies of 1996. What's behind the scenes of too many of our overall frenzied areas of life in the U.S. today?

What's left? Do we have any workable whistles? Who can orchestrate any sustained and needed whistle-blowing? Do we have time left to find out and get the orchestrated whistles all working together? The tune is more important than the people wanting to direct the choruses.

By: Joan E. Battey

Published originally at EtherZone.com