Chris Tomaras / Straight Talk / October 11, 2008

“Straight Talk” is not a platform to promote personal political views but I was sent an article the other day which made me reminisce and recall my childhood and how different things were back then. As an example just check out the price of a ticket to a professional sporting event. What kid or average parent, for that matter, can afford to go to a baseball or basketball game? It’s not only professional sports but it has now carried over to college sports.

My memories as a kid were those where neighbors were truly neighbors. They would stop over frequently without a formal invitation, sit down at the kitchen table, have a cup of coffee, share stories, laugh and care about one another. Kids played ball in the backyard or school yard, rode bikes, laughed and had a good time. I guess the big differences were that life was far less serious and we got a great deal more pleasure out of the simple things, we laughed a lot more and there was a lot less focus on affluence. Today we live in angry world and an angry country. The object of life is to make a lot of money and have the freedom to say and do as we wish. The premise being, the more we have, the happier we will be. Yet do you notice how everyone you talk to wishes it could be the way it used to be. And that’s because, regardless of how much money or so called success you have and how many toys you’ve accumulated, that’s not what truly makes you happy.

The email I received said this:
“When electing the next President, I’m just telling you that 'the only decision you have to make is who you want sitting in that seat in the White House …..when …..
not if ….but
-  WHEN we get hit again and millions of American lives are put at risk!”

This is from an article entitled: 'You Ain't Gonna Like Losing.'  Author unknown. The article went on to say:

“President Bush did make a bad mistake in the war on terrorism.  But the mistake was not his decision to go to war in Iraq . Bush's mistake came in his belief that this country is the same one his father fought for in WWII. It is not.

Back then, they had just come out of a vicious depression. The country was steeled by the hardship of that depression, but they still believed fervently in this country. They knew that the people had elected their leaders, so it was the people's duty to back those leaders.

Therefore, when the war broke out the people came together, rallied behind, and stuck with their leaders, whether they had voted for them or not or whether the war was going badly or not. And war was just as distasteful and the anguish just as great then as it is today. Often there were more casualties in one day in WWII than we have had in the entire Iraq war.  But that did not matter.  The people stuck with the President because it was their patriotic duty. Americans put aside their differences in WWII and worked together to win that war.

Everyone from every strata of society, from young to old pitched in. Small children pulled little wagons around to gather scrap metal for the war effort.  Grade school students saved their pennies to buy stamps for war bonds to help the effort. Men who were too old or medically 4F lied about their age or condition trying their best to join the military. Women doubled their work to keep things going at home.  Harsh rationing of everything from gasoline to soap to butter was imposed, yet there was very little complaining.

You never heard prominent people on the radio belittling the President. Interestingly enough in those days there were no fat cat actors and entertainers who ran off to visit and fawn over dictators of hostile countries and complain to them about our President. Instead, they made upbeat films and entertained our troops to help the troops' morale.  And a bunch even enlisted. And imagine this: Teachers in schools actually started the day off with the Pledge of Allegiance, and with prayers for our country and our troops!

Back then, no newspaper would have dared point out certain weak spots in our cities where bombs could be set off to cause the maximum damage. No newspaper would have dared complain about what we were doing to catch spies. A newspaper would have been laughed out of existence if it had complained that German or Japanese soldiers were being 'tortured' by being forced to wear women's underwear, or subjected to interrogation by a woman, or being scared by a dog or did not have air conditioning. There were a lot of things different back then. We were not subjected to a constant bombardment of pornography, perversion and promiscuity in movies or on radio.  We did not have legions of crack heads, dope pushers and armed gangs roaming our streets.

No, President Bush did not make a mistake in his handling of terrorism. He made the mistake of believing that we still had the courage and fortitude of our fathers. He believed that this was still the country that our fathers fought so dearly to preserve. It is not the same country…... It is now a cross between Sodom and Gomorra and the land of Oz.  We did unite for a short while after 9/11, but our attitude changed when we found out that defending our country would require some sacrifices.

We are in great danger. The terrorists are fanatic Muslims.  They believe that it is okay, even their duty, to kill anyone who will not convert to Islam.  It has been estimated that about one third or over three hundred million Muslims are sympathetic to the terrorists cause... Hitler and Tojo combined did not have nearly that many potential recruits.  So.. We either win it - or lose it - and You Ain't Gonna Like Losing. America is not at war. The military is at war. America is at the mall, or watching the movie stars.”

In my personal opinion, we have stretched our civil liberties to protect those lowlifes who produce pornography while promoting perversion and, while we know it’s a horrific problem with far reaching effects, we rationalize that because of what it says in the constitution, that we would be infringing on the freedoms of these perverted sickos, so our laws and courts allow it.

I spoke last week as to how Wall Street and our credit system turned into a big casino but because of the huge amounts of money that were being made, we got blinded by greed and our regulators allowed it. Now that we’re in a huge mess, they suddenly act shocked and play the blame game.

As one American to another I’m pretty incensed at what we have allowed our country to become, where politicians are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on elections and talking about lavish victory parties while we have families that are homeless, jobless and starving. We have people phonying up the ballot boxes and opponents viciously demeaning one another. We give a biased, blood-sucking press the freedom to say and do whatever they would like, calling it their constitutional right and responsibility. Everyone to a person is sick to their stomachs listening to the press, the campaign ads and the total childishness of an excuse for what we call the process of electing our country’s highest ranking official. It’s an embarrassment. And yet we wonder how we have gotten ourselves into the financial mess that we are in. It’s not about any one person or one political party or Wall Street or the banks or the GSEs. It’s about our culture and society and the same things that destroyed the Roman, Greek and Babylonian civilizations. These same things are destroying life as we once knew it. We are all responsible and it’s time to take a stand and speak out against all of this nonsense.

We want to be free to do and say whatever we want, but even when we know it’s wrong, we hide behind our constitutional freedoms and whine and point fingers like a big bunch of babies wanting to get their way.

Our country was started on the premise of one nation under God, where our leaders prayed and worked together to achieve excellence. Where honesty, hard work and integrity stood for something. But now the same things that destroyed these other civilizations are destroying our country and it’s not the hurricanes, the wildfires, the earthquakes and the tornadoes. It’s the self-centered, self-entitled, greed and lack of morality that has become this country’s way of life disguised as freedom and democracy. Special interest groups including civil libertarians will win their battles but if we don’t get back to basic decency and morality and take back our culture, we will all lose the war.

We complain a lot about our President yet how quickly we forget what life was like on 9/11 and how those radical extremist murderers are now either dead or on the run. It’s been over 7 years since that tragedy occurred and I just thank God, I thank our President and I thank the many brave men and women who have sacrificed their lives to keep everyone in this country safe…. even the ones who constantly whine and complain.

And that’s today’s straight talk.