IT'S DE JA VUE ALL OVER AGAIN

                                 YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING

Because little kids are small and inexperienced they naturally tend to idealize the important authority figures in their lives including parents, teachers, prinicples, the cop on the beat, firemen, politicians etc. These idealizations remain in place until there are observed inevitable contraditions and discrepancies that take the form of crises of trust, and reliability.

The older I get the more I am increasingly aware of a universal decrement in the general level of quality control. It is as if there has been a mass acceptance of aspiring to the lowest level of caring and responsibility.

Rarely a day goes by when there isn't a news story highlighting some major scandal; insideous collective manipulations of the powerful over the weak; corruption on a grand scale; abuses of authority that would make any decent human beings head spin; an apparent wholesale selling out of those who should know better to expediency instead of an unswavering dedication to that which is fair and just.

Case in point! Note the following story on the Drudge report tonight - 10/18/2007.

A Mexican national infected with a highly contagious form of Tuberculosis crossed the U.S. border 76 times and took multiple domestic flights in the last year, according to Customs and Border Protection interviews and documents obtained by THE WASHINGTON TIMES...

The Custom's and Border Protection (CBP) agency was warned by health officials on April 16 that the frequent traveller was infected, but it took Homeland Security officials seven weeks to issue a May 31 alert to warn its own border inspectors, according to Homeland Security sources who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution... DEVELOPING... [Shades of Katrina]

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Seventy six times the authorities were told only to be dismissed seventy five. What are the rest of us to do. Surprised? Shocked? No longer. Stories like this happen everyday and seem to be multiplying like an ehtical cancer virus set loose in the wind to enmesh itself in the world's populations.

In a way it is so absurd to acknowledge the horrible implications of such monstrous acts that all one can feel comfortable in doing is to drink a bottle of wine and have a belly laugh.

But that too is a cop out.

We had better singularly and collectively wake up and take note that our world is spinning out of control as we speak.

Might it not be reasonably asked: Hasn't the world always been going to hell and a hand basket and like Thorton Wilder's "Skin of Our Teeth" always somehow managed to get by? Yes this is true.  Yet the stakes seem higher and more widespread as the world has shrunk. Thus a contagion of a tb infection or even a diseased idea can travel around the world in short order  stirring an epidemic leading to pandamonium  and panic anxiety in the blink of an eye.

What should we do about it?

We had better open our individual and collective eyes and face the dissonant music. as these are difficult and chilling times. Let sleeping dogs lie  - or que sera sera - would not be good maxims to live by.

Clearly I have no panacea nor does anyone else. But at least I am not deluding myself that all is well deluding myself that this is the best of all possible worlds. We have a responsibility to insist that our leaders are wise, and trustworthy saying what they mean and meaning what they say. Doing what they say they will do and above all insist that they be accountable.

If we allow the drift - the staus quo - we will surely slowly or quickly sink in a cess pool of meaningless disconnectedness still in love with our elevated idealized images such as "We're Number One" as we burn in the fires of our own manufactured hell on earth.