Just like Esme Weatherwax, a character created by Sir Terry Pratchett, I ate’nt dead. Just missing from posting regularly on the blog. Unlike Granny Weatherwax, I can’t go borrowing the mind of flying creatures to view the world. I can only open YouTube, pull up my favorite independent news people and go “he’s not dead yet.” I’m talking about my least favorite politiical entity.

I’m not going to mention any names, but I am finding as I get older, I have less patience with political foolishness. If I had a time machine, I would go back to the founding fathers and tell them while the Constitution is a great document, they need to add a maximum age limit on politicians in all three arms of the government of 70 years, a maximum of 4 terms in total for Congress, and that no member of congress should be paid more than 4 times the minimum prevailing wage per year. Members of the Supreme Court should have term limits of 10 years maximum so they can keep up with the changing societal norms.

Radical, I know, but I’m tired of old men trying to turn back social, educational, and economic progress and return us to the good old 19th century. I’m tired of dealing with under-educated people who can barely read and have little understanding of what they read unless it’s in the form of a 200 character, more or less, message of the most extreme rumor, innuendo, and mis-information.

The major problem as I see it is the destruction of the education system, whereby your ignorance is as valid as my knowledge because you were passed along every year, because no one wanted to make you feel bad. No one did any favors to those kids who needed remedial classes by passing them down the line.

And then there’s the poverty aspect. Corporations were allowed to offshore manufacturing to countries with lower wage standards. The next result is the currently impoverished and the not quite impoverished populations that we have now. The minimum wage was supposed to guarantee a minimum standard of living that included the ability to afford a family with a decent place to live, food on the table, and clothing for the seasons.

It should have worked. It did almost work for a time. You could say the 1950s and early part of the ‘60s were the epitome of the “live on the minimum wage” times. The Depression was over, the World War had ended, there was that bit of a war that ultimately divided Korea. Soon to come was that utter crap shoot of a land war in Asia.

And sex, drugs, and rock and roll came along with the dystopian feeling that things weren’t quite right because it was a new decade and a new war. And we’ve been at war ever since and putting less money into people and more money into weapons and wars. And here we are. I’m celebrating the holiday that this day is, and not the other thing that’s happening today. It’s a day of mourning for what we could have been.

It’s my opinion— that is all.