Are we there yet?

Everything I read and hear seems to leave the impression we're teetering on the brink. The Patriots of Twitter are beside themselves, newsletters are full of it, every corner of the world is melting down. It's natural to wonder, "Are we there yet?"

It's as if people everywhere sense something foreboding ahead, a wall, a cliff, a chasm... an ending. How much is The Age and how much is just age? It seems to fight just to fight is to lose before you start, but to do nothing when you should've done something...?

I wonder, do you think the Founding Fathers felt "smart" or up to it, at least while they were going through it? They went back and forth across the ocean, trying for years to come to a peaceful solution. Sometimes, there's just nothing else left but the choice you wanted least to make.

If
Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

I Want My Mommy!

The Viet Nam War's main time period was in the 60s, it was pretty much over by the 70s. My husband's a Viet Nam vet, who came home in 1970, the year we married. The anti-war protests occurred primarily during the last half of the 60s, and were an out-growth of the Anti-Establishment indoctrination absorbed by those who called themselves Hippies. The 60s era was the period during which college-going teens were first introduced to unfettered Communist Anti-Establishment (anti-traditional, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-family, anti-morals) indoctrination in the colleges they attended. That was a time of turmoil here at home that outstripped that of the war.

The kids of the 60s were the first to come of age raised by mothers who considered working outside the home to be more important than staying home and raising their children. The result was a generation of children disconnected from the sense of family that had always infused previous generations. We got the "a woman only matters if she works" mystique from the WWII era mindset, through "Rosie The Riveter" and other such war-time propaganda. The female abandonment of woman's traditional role as Homemaker has often been laid at the feet of the Feminist Movement when, in fact, the Women's Liberation Movement was a direct out-growth of the WWII female mindset that had done its damage long before Gloria Steinem appeared on the scene.

The WWII era was the first full-on frontal assault on the traditional family, the backbone of American society. It's been down-hill ever since. With the vilification of the traditional female role of stay-at-home-Mom, a death-blow was landed on the classic American way of life. Prior to that devastating accomplishment, the Communists had minimal affect in changing America's classic mores, because the loving influence of Mom was more powerful than the influences of the world outside the secure home environment she nurtured. When the pillar of Mom was removed, the societal structure began self-destructing almost immediately.

You can blame radical movements of every ilk, drugs, TV, cell phones, internet and/or social net-working, placing the blame on the generations since the fall of Mom but, if you do, you're blaming the symptoms and ignoring the root cause. A society that vilifies the critical role of stay-at-home Moms is a society that's chosen to commit suicide.